An undersea investigator says he's found the wreckage of a long-missing plane thought to have crashed into Lake Champlain after taking off from Vermont.
The private jet, with the registration N400CP, disappeared shortly after taking off from Burlington en route to Providence, Rhode Island, on Jan. 27, 1971. There were five people on board, and despite search attempts over the decades by police and private citizens, the wreck was never found.
But Garry Kozak, an undersea search expert who has previously located other wrecks, announced Tuesday that he and a colleague used a side scan sonar system on a location they'd identified as a possible crash site based on data from a 2014 search and located debris field consistent with the wreckage of a small plane crash.
On Saturday, they brought a remote vehicle to the site, in about 200 feet of water near Juniper Island, and identified the wreckage of a plane with the same paint scheme as N400CP, according to the announcement.
Kozak told NBC10 Boston Tuesday he was "100% confident" the wreck is the missing plane, saying very few jets have sunk in Lake Champlain and noting the custom color scheme and other details.
A representative for the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane crashes, confirmed it was investigating information it received from the Federal Aviation Administration.
"We will be evaluating the specifics of what was found, and the degree of certainty to which we are able to positively link it back to the wreckage that was located. Following that, if and when any of that wreckage were recovered, we would determine what level of examination would be appropriate given what is recovered and what condition it is in," spokesman Peter Knudson said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration referred questions to the NTSB. A Vermont State Police representative said in a statement the agency was aware of reports of the discovery but that the investigation would fall to the NTSB, adding, "We are unsure if Mr. Kozak has made any report of his findings to the relevant authorities."
Kozak told NBC10 Boston he hadn't reached out to the NTSB about the apparent discovery.
NBC10 Boston has also reached out to the families of the people who disappeared onboard, who have been looking for answers for decades.
