A jet carrying 5 people mysteriously vanished in 1971. Experts say they’ve found the wreckage in Lake Champlain.

Fifty-three years after a private plane carrying five men disappeared on a snowy night in Vermont, experts believe they have found the wreckage of the long-lost jet in Lake Champlain.

The corporate jet disappeared shortly after departing Burlington Airport for Providence, Rhode Island, on January 27, 1971. Those on board included two crew members and three employees of the Atlanta, Georgia-based development company Cousin’s Properties, who were working in a development project. in Burlington.

Initial searches for the 10-seater Jet Commander found no wreckage and the lake, which is 120 meters at its deepest point, froze four days after the plane was lost. At least 17 other searches took place, until underwater researcher Garry Kozak and a team using a remotely operated vehicle last month found wreckage of a jet with the same custom paint scheme in the lake near where the radio control tower had tracked. the plane for the last time before him. disappeared. Sonar images were taken of the wreckage found 200 feet near Juniper Island. The island is just over 3 miles southwest of Burlington.

“With all this evidence, we are 99 percent absolutely certain,” Kozak said Monday.

The discovery of the wreckage in Lake Champlain, which lies between New York and Vermont, gives the victims’ families “some closure and answers a lot of the questions they had,” he said.

Kozak told CBS affiliate WCAX-TV that the search may have taken so long because the jets break into many pieces that are not easy to detect.

“A jet looks like a pile of rocks, literally. So for most people looking at the sonar data, they might ignore it because they’ll say, ‘Oh, that looks like geology,'” Kozak told the station.

According to your website, Kozak’s career in underwater search and survey began in 1972 and his company specializes in shipwreck and aircraft location. In 2012, Kozak was part of a team that discovered a German submarine from the Second World War in the waters off Nantucket.

While relatives are grateful and relieved at the plane’s discovery, the discovery also opens up more questions and old wounds.

“To have this found now … it’s a peaceful feeling, but at the same time it’s a very sad feeling,” Barbara Nikita, niece of pilot George Nikita, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We know what happened. We’ve seen some pictures. I think we’re struggling with it now.”

Frank Wilder’s father, also Frank Wilder, was a passenger on the plane.

“Going 53 years without knowing if the plane was in the lake or maybe on the side of a mountain somewhere was harrowing,” said Wilder, who lives outside Philadelphia. “And again, I’m relieved to know where the plane is now, but unfortunately this is opening up other questions and we have to work on them now.”

When the ice melted in the spring of 1971, wreckage of the plane was found at Shelburne Point, according to Kozak. An underwater search in May 1971 failed to find the wreckage. At least 17 other searches took place, including in 2014, according to Kozak. At that time, authorities were stimulated by curiosity after the Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines plane that year, with the hope that new technology would find the wreckage, but it did not.

Barbara Nikita, who lives in Southern California, and her cousin Kristina Nikita Coffey, who lives in Tennessee, have led recent search efforts and contacted relatives of other victims.

What was fascinating about reconnecting with the group was that “everyone had pieces of the pie and the puzzle that when we started sharing information and documents what we got was a much greater understanding and perspective of the information, of how we were all impacted by this,” said Charles Williams, whose father, Robert Ransom Williams III, an employee of Cousin’s Properties, was on the plane.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating to see if it is the plane, Williams said. The NTSB does not conduct salvage operations, which would be expensive, Williams said.

“Whether there are tangible remains, and I hate to say it this way, and are worth disturbing, is a decision we will have to figure out later, and part of what we are unpacking now,” he said. “It’s hard when you start thinking about it.”

The victims’ families plan to hold a memorial now that they know where the plane is located.

The announcement of the discovery comes about 10 months after the wreckage of a Tuskegee Airman’s plane which crashed during a World War II training mission was recovered from Lake Huron.