Mike Slack Speaks with the Boston Globe Following Nantucket Air Ambulance Crash
Aviation attorney Mike Slack was interviewed by the Boston Globe following the loss of a Gulfstream G100 air ambulance off Nantucket on October 3, 2026. The jet was flying a medical evacuation from Bermuda to Boston with six people aboard: a four-person crew, a patient and a family escort. The Coast Guard suspended its search Sunday evening after covering more than 4,445 square miles over roughly 66 hours. The operator, Latitude Air Ambulance of Hamilton, Ontario, has said all six are presumed to have died.
Our thoughts are with their families.
Slack, who is a licensed pilot and a former NASA aerospace engineer, reviewed the flight tracking data for the Globe. The aircraft fell from 24,000 feet to 11,000 feet in about three minutes, a rate exceeding 4,000 feet per minute.
“Clearly, an aircraft descending at over 4,000 feet a minute from 24,000 feet to 11,000 is out of control,” Slack said. “No pilot would do that if they were in control of the aircraft.”
He noted that the G100 is a high-performance jet that becomes difficult to manage once control is lost, particularly at night over water, where a crew may have only ten to twenty seconds to respond. At that rate of descent the G-loads would have been severe enough to make it extremely difficult for anyone still conscious to act, and a catastrophic structural failure during the descent cannot be ruled out. Until the flight recorder is recovered, he said, what happened aboard the aircraft remains unknown.
Mike Slack is board certified in aviation law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a licensed pilot, and a former NASA aerospace engineer. Slack Davis has handled many air ambulance and medical transport accident cases, including matters requiring coordination across multiple national investigative authorities.
Slack Davis will continue to monitor updates as the investigation progresses.