Experts Find Wreckage in Lake Champlain Believed to Be Jet Missing Since 1971

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Since air travel is getting safer and safer all the time, plane crashes are pretty rare these days. Even though the crashes that do happen can be absolutely devastating, we have better technology than ever to find the crash and use it to determine what went wrong. But this wasn't always true, and while there's still no guarantee that we'll be able to recover all of the wreckage (or any of it) in some cases, we're able to do a lot more now than we could decades ago.

And speaking of decades ago, it looks like we're closer to knowing more about a crash that took place more than 50 years ago after wreckage was uncovered in a lake in Vermont.

In a video that the Today show shared on TikTok on Wednesday, June 12, Hoda Kotb reported that wreckage has been found in Lake Champlain that investigators believe belonged to a private jet that crashed in the area back in 1971.

In January of that year, the plane left the Burlington airport heading to Providence, Rhode Island with two crew members and three passengers on it. Kotb said that more than 17 searches for the jet have been conducted since then, but were never successful until now.

The wreckage was found using a remotely operated vehicle — something that wouldn't have been possible when the plane first crashed — and matches the custom paint job of the plane that crashed. It's amazing how far we've come!

More About the Lake Champlain Plane Crash

According to the Associated Press, debris from the crash first showed up in the spring of 1971 when the snow melted at Shelburne Point, but that's as far as they were ever able to get until recently.

The niece of pilot George Nikitas, Barbara Nikitas, helped get a start on the search again recently, along with other family members of the victims of the crash. But having more answers now still doesn't give them the full picture.

“Spending 53 years not knowing if the plane was in the lake or maybe on a mountainside around there somewhere was distressing,” Frank Wilder, whose father was on the plane, said. “And again, I’m feeling relieved that I know where the plane is now but unfortunately it’s opening other questions and we have to work on those now.”

The victims' families plan to hold a memorial near the crash site now, but it's yet to be determined what, if anything, will happen to the wreckage that has been found.

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