The search the Coast Guard called off

One · What happened

Sixty-six hours of searching, and a debris field

Early on 3 October the Coast Guard heard from the Federal Aviation Administration that contact with a jet had been lost. The jet was a Canadian-registered air ambulance, a Gulfstream G100, that had left Bermuda for Boston shortly before one. According to the Associated Press, the pilot had reported electrical trouble and declared an emergency on the way in, before air traffic control lost contact south of Nantucket. A debris field turned up that day about twenty miles off the island, in water eighty to ninety feet deep. The Coast Guard searched the water for sixty-six hours before calling it off. On Sunday 4 October Rear Admiral Matthew Lake, who commands the service’s northeast district, announced that the search was suspended.

Bermuda police named the patient as Marilyn Bean, aged sixty-six. Her family escort was her son, Sergio Lottimore, aged forty-one. The four Canadian crew were Philip Childerhose, Thomas Farquhar, Sarah Paton and Jolene Weir, as ABC News listed them. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada leads the investigation, with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board assisting. The board has named no cause. The Ontario company that operated the flight, Latitude Air Ambulance, said in a statement that all six are presumed to have died.

Two · What it is doing

The radio call and the hunt for a cause

“Roger, you said you’re coming in blind,” an air traffic controller told the jet, in audio the Associated Press and NBC News both reported. The line travels easily out of a news story, along with the words electrical difficulties. Anybody whose mother may someday need to be moved by air has been handed a picture of how such a move can go. Since no reader can touch a jet over the Atlantic, the dread settles on the nearest flight or ambulance ride on his own calendar. He begins to hear in the controller’s question a picture of help that went wrong on the way.

On Monday 5 October the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said that it would lead the investigation. A reader does not wait. The Associated Press quoted the aviation analyst Mary Schiavo on the danger of losing instruments in bad weather, and the jet had come down as a storm approached the coast. With those facts in hand a man can assemble a verdict on the crew or the operator within the hour. He wants the verdict because a fear with a culprit feels manageable. Judging the crew before the investigators have found what brought the jet down is rash judgment against people who cannot answer back. A second reader feels a quieter relief at the thought that it was somebody else’s plane. Neither reaction has room for Marilyn Bean and her son, or for the four crew whose work was flying strangers toward care.

Three · Where the ground is

What James told the men planning a year of trade

James wrote to men who said they would spend a year in some town trading for a profit (James 4:13). He told them they did not know what tomorrow would bring. The sentence he gave them to say was “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:14–15). Nothing in the letter tells the merchants to close the shop.

The sea and its dead

“The sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done,” John wrote (Revelation 20:13). He was on the island of Patmos at the time (Revelation 1:9). No depth of water and no suspended search puts a person beyond the reach of the One who judges the living and the dead. Where any of the six stood with God is known to the Lord alone. The verse does not ask a reader to guess.

“The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,” Paul called the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 15:20). Firstfruits are the first of a harvest still coming in. Paul had passed on to the Corinthians what he received, that Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). The hope of a believer lost at sea is that same raising. That hope rests with the One who was raised and does not wait on anybody finding a body.

Numbering the days

The psalm headed with the name of Moses asks God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). The Preacher in Ecclesiastes wrote that “man does not know his time” and pictured people caught at an evil time like fish in a net and birds in a snare (Ecclesiastes 9:12). Both writers were talking about how a person lives while he is still alive. A passenger who boards next week has been told something true. Neither text forbids boarding. In the psalm, to number the days is to settle today what a man would want settled if the day went wrong.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

For readers a long way from Nantucket the five jobs are small, and four of them take only a telephone and an afternoon.

1. 01

   Put the first number to call in your wallet.

   Write on a card the name and number of the person who should hear first if you are hurt away from home. Put the same name in the emergency contacts on your phone, where a stranger can read it from the lock screen. Add a line about anything a nurse would have to know before she touched you. The merchants in James’s letter did not know what tomorrow would bring, and neither does anybody hurrying to catch a flight (James 4:14). A card is a small way to plan under that sentence.

2. 02

   Call your mother, or whoever stands where a mother stands.

   Keep the call going past the news and into the garden or the neighbor’s dog. The call takes a quarter of an hour. Marilyn Bean was on her way to care with her son along when the jet lost contact. Moses asked God to teach us to number our days (Psalm 90:12).

3. 03

   Leave the recording alone.

   Delete the controller’s exchange with the jet from any thread you were sent it in. A second hearing helps nobody. The families of the six, in Bermuda and in Canada, are living inside those minutes. Paul told the Galatians to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

4. 04

   Tell the next person with a theory that you are waiting for the report.

   When a coworker explains what brought the jet down, say that you will wait for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. The board announced on 5 October that it would lead the investigation. Its report will take longer than a lunch hour. Proverbs 18:13 says, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”

5. 05

   Take a meal to somebody in your church who works nights with the sick.

   Ask your pastor which people in the congregation work nights as nurses or paramedics, or on a flight crew. The four on that jet crewed an air ambulance. Take one of those workers a meal in a container that does not have to come back. In Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats the King says, “I was sick and you visited me” (Matthew 25:36). People who do the visiting for a living rarely get visited themselves.