Mystery of plane that vanished more than 50 years ago with five passengers on board finally solved
The mystery of a plane which disappeared over 50 years ago appears to have been solved after a new search turned up the answer.
On 27 January, 1971 a private plane took off from Burlington Airport, Vermont and was headed for Rhode Island and contact was lost with the aircraft shortly afterwards.
There were five people on board the plane, two crew members and three development company employees, who vanished along with their plane.
Extensive efforts to find the five were made, but no wreckage could be found and searching Lake Champlain which sat adjacent to Burlington was difficult as it froze over just days after the aircraft went missing.
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Several searches were made of the lake, which is 400ft deep at its lowest point, but now it seems as though the wreckage of the plane has finally been discovered.
According to CBS a team using remotely operated vehicles finally found some wreckage of a plane which bore the same design as the missing aircraft.
The discovery was made close to where contact had been lost with the plane, and search leader Garry Kozak said he was pretty sure it was the same plane that had gone missing 53 years ago.
He said he was '99 percent absolutely sure' that he and his team had found the missing plane and solved the mystery, and he hopes that this might help provide 'some closure and answers a lot of the questions they had' to the families of the five people who died.
He explained that searching for planes underwater was very difficult because they break up into so many pieces that identifying them among everything else beneath the surface of the water was tricky.
Kozak told WCAX-TV: "A jet, it looks like a pile of rocks, literally. So, to most people looking at sonar data, they can overlook it because they'll go, 'Oh, that looks like geology'."
It seems as though the discovery has gone some way in soothing the sorrows of those who were related to the five people who died in the plane's disappearance.
Barbara Nikita, niece of pilot George Nikita, told Associated Press that the plane's discovery was 'a peaceful feeling' but also 'a very sad feeling'.
Frank Wilder, whose father of the same name was on board the plane, said: "Spending 53 years not knowing if the plane was in the lake or maybe on a mountainside around there somewhere was distressing.
"And again, I'm feeling relieved that I know where the plane is now but unfortunately it's opening other questions and we have to work on those now."
Joe Harker