Underwater drone solves 53-year-old Vermont plane crash mystery with wreckage discovery

07:26

Searchers finally find jet that crashed 53 years ago in Lake Champlain

Two researchers refused to give up on finding a jet that crashed in 1971 with five people aboard. The team poured over sonar of the bottom of Lake Champlain and finally discovered the jet. The video is about 7-and-a-half minutes long and shows the wreckage strewn across the lake bed.

BURLINGTON, Vt. – An underwater drone solved a 53-year-old mystery of what happened to a private jet carrying five people that went missing in New England, finally giving five families answers.

The answers came in the form of a discovery some 200 feet under Vermont's Lake Champlain. Ghostly images of a broken jet covered in 53 years of sea creatures appeared on a high-resolution camera mounted to a drone on May 25, 2024.

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"The ROV was dropped to the lake floor and the real-time video transmitted to the surface showed a broken plane fuselage, painted white with a red and black accent striping, the same custom paint scheme as N400CP," stated a press release from Garry Kozak, who organized the effort, referencing the tail number of the missing plane.

"Nearby were the remains of two turbine jet engines along with broken wing structure," the release continued. "A section of the instrument panel was located along with wire bundles from the cockpit area. The video and pictures left zero doubt that N400CP had finally been located, and a 53-year-old mystery solved."

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The jet engine on the plane built in 1965 over a present day picture of it.

(Garry Kozak / FOX Weather)

This is the first time in decades anyone had seen the twin-engine, 10-seat 1121 Jet Commander that carried five men to their deaths. Kozak finally found the Cousins Properties corporate jet, which was from Atlanta.

The underwater search expert had used similar equipment to try to locate the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 jet that disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. He recently heard the rumors of a missing private jet that sat at the bottom of Lake Champlain from his archaeologist and historian friend in the 1980s. The story got under his skin and eventually prompted him to research the site.

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The custom striping matches before crash pictures.

(Garry Kozak / FOX Weather)

Jet disappears from Vermont airport

The mystery started on the evening of Jan. 27, 1971, when a corporate jet disappeared after taking off from Burlington, Vermont at 7:52 p.m. The weather featured light snow, a stiff wind and a wind chill of -45 degrees, but investigators were later told that weather was not a major concern.

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The yellow shows the flight path of the jet and the red shows previous search areas. Kozak found the debris field in the center of the search area.

(Garry Kozak / FOX Weather)

The flight was going to be one of the 33-year-old co-pilot Donald Myers' last at the helm on the executive jet. The father of two was scheduled to start with Delta Air Lines just two weeks later, according to local media.

The Burlington tower air traffic controller told investigators that he remembered giving the pilot permission to make a left turn after take off. He watched the radar and in four minutes, the jet was over the middle of the lake, according to a 2017 report in the Burlington Free Press.

The controller reported that he heard what sounded like an open microphone transmitting to the tower for a few seconds, then nothing. And the next radar sweep showed no plane. Eyewitnesses reported a "bluish flash" and a sound around mid-lake.

Searchers went out the next morning to try to locate what they assumed to be wreckage. 

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A photo of 41-year old pilot George Nikita over the present day front panel section of the plane.

(Garry Kozak / FOX Weather)

"It was a very cold morning with the remaining open water of the lake rapidly freezing over," wrote the Editor-in-Chief of the Burlington Free Press. "It was clearly a race against time to find floating debris or a fuel slick on the water before the lake sealed over with ice for the season."

The Air Force flew fighters with classified infrared cameras over the lake. Cousins Properties hired a firm that had located nuclear bombs off the coast of Spain years before. Investigators called in two submarines but the weather and lake ice won, according to the Free Press story.

No evidence surfaced until the April thaw. A tire showing major damage, hatch door, arm rest, oxygen tank, foam from seat cushions and pieces of carpet washed up onto the lake's shoreline, reported the paper.

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Side scan radar showing the debris field.

(Garry Kozak / FOX Weather)

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Through 2018, the Free Press tallied up 24 separate searches for the jet. They netted sunken boats, even a car ferry, but no jet. Even so, Kozak and others remained positive that the jet sat at the bottom of the lake. Myers' widow even had her ashes scattered over Lake Champlain when she died.

"He (Kozak) was convinced the plane was within the searched areas, but that it had been overlooked by all the previous searches," stated the news release.

Kozak starts his search

The enigma of the 1971 crash became too much for Kozak in 2014 after the latest failed attempt to find the plane. He acquired low resolution Side Scan Sonar data recorded from the lake in 1997. Finally, over the winter of 2023, he spotted an anomaly. Then, on May 19, he organized a group to search again with high-tech side scan radar.

"The resulting high resolution sonar images clearly showed a large debris field which was very representative of a jet aircraft crash," states the release. "A jet hitting the water at high speed breaks into many pieces, creating a debris field." 

Kozak said he only took video and pictures of the wreck site without disturbing it because, "it is a graveside of 5 people." He also agreed to keep the location confidential out of respect.

The five crash victims left behind nine children. One told AP that the family will plan a memorial, finally.