GREEN, Ohio — Two Canton Township, Ohio natives are overjoyed to learn a fighter plane housed at a local museum has ties to their pilot brother, who went missing while flying a mission in the Vietnam War more than 50 years ago.

Barb Aman and Rich Schoeppner beam with pride as they look back at photographs of their older brother, Lt. Jack Schoeppner.

"He loved adventure. He loved speed," Aman said.

While his siblings admired Jack for his service to his country, most of their memories surround growing up with him in Canton Township.

Aman said her brother was a good guy, very smart and an Eagle Scout.

"He graduated at the top of his class at Central Catholic High School in 1961," Aman said.

Rich Schoeppner recalled the time that he accidentally rode a bicycle into a pool and struggled to get out until his brother saved his life.

"He meant the world to me," Rich Schoeppner said.

Lt. Jack Schoeppner got his "wings" as a Navy fighter pilot in 1966. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam and flew dozens of missions, according to relatives.

But on March 9, 1970, the F4 Phantom he was piloting along with Lt. Rex Lewis Parcels went down in the Gulf of Tonkin. They were reported as missing in action.

"Supposedly, where he went down is unrecoverable," Rich Schoeppner said.

Fifty-one years have passed. Both men are considered dead, but neither has been found.

"There's no closure when they don't come home," Aman said. "It's hard. I think your mind tells you that you know it's true, but your heart tells you something else."

The hope of finding any tangible connection to the fighter pilot faded over the decades. But then, something remarkable happened at MAPS Air Museum in nearby Green, Ohio.

The museum has a mission to preserve the history of military aviation.

"For me, it's the place for veterans to come back and feel it's a safe spot," said Valerie Kinney, one of the directors at MAPS.

In 2003, the Navy offered to loan the museum a 56,000-pound F4 Phantom fighter jet to MAPS. They gladly accepted.

Bob Jones | News 5 Cleveland

For 16 years, museum workers and volunteers didn't realize there was an amazing link between Jack Schoeppner and the fighter jet on display.

That all changed in 2019 when Rich Schoeppner began having conversations with people connected to MAPS. Thanks to Lt. Schoeppner's meticulous flight book, they realized that Jack had flown the jet that was on display at the museum.

"I was amazed. Totally surprising, couldn't believe it," Rich Schoeppner said.

Lt. Schoeppner's flight log indicated which jet he flew by serial number. He made notations before every takeoff and after each landing.

On March 6, 1970, three days before his death, Jack Schoeppner wrote in his book that he flew a jet with the serial number 155764 — the same number on the fighter now housed at MAPS.

For his family, it was an unbelievable coincidence — or perhaps, fate.

"We don't choose the planes. The planes choose us. For some reason, this plane was meant to be here," Aman said.

"He's finally coming home after 51 years," Rich Schoeppner added.

As it turns out, documents showed the jet at MAPS also went up to search for Schoeppner and Parcels when they disappeared on that fateful day in Vietnam in 1970.

The plane has since been restored, and the museum has added the words "Lt. Chops Schoeppner" on the canopy. "Chops" was Schoeppner's call sign.

Bob Jones | News 5 Cleveland

The insignia for Jack's squadron, the Freelancers, was also added to the back of the fighter.

"I couldn't ask for anything more," Rich Schoeppner said.

Bob Jones | News 5 Cleveland

But the museum indeed will do something more in the days following Veterans Day.

On Friday afternoon, a headstone will be dedicated in honor of Jack Schoeppner during a ceremony in the MIA section at Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in Rittman.

In addition, a dedication of the F4 Phantom in memory of Jack Schoeppner and Parcels will take place on Saturday from 3:00 to 7:30 p.m at MAPS.

"It's like he's coming home, and everybody will be able to remember his story," Aman said.

This story was originally published by Bob Jones on Scripps station WEWS in Cleveland.

JAKARTA, Jakarta —

A Sriwijaya Air jet carrying 62 people lost contact with air traffic controllers minutes after taking off from Indonesia's capital on a domestic flight on Saturday, and debris found by fishermen was being examined to see if it was from the missing plane, officials said.

Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said Flight SJ182 was delayed for an hour before it took off at 2:36 p.m. The Boeing 737-500 disappeared from radar four minutes later, after the pilot contacted air traffic control to ascend to an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,839 meters), he said.

The airline said in a statement that the plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island. The plane was carrying 50 passengers and 12 crew members, all Indonesian nationals, including six extra crew for another trip.

Sumadi said a dozen vessels, including four warships, were deployed in a search-and-rescue operation centered between Lancang island and Laki island, part of the Thousand Islands chain just north of Jakarta.

Bambang Suryo Aji, the National Search and Rescue Agency’s deputy head of operations and preparedness, said rescuers collected plane debris and clothes that were found by fishermen. They handed the items over to the National Transportation Safety Committee for further investigation to determine whether they were from the missing plane.

A commander of one of the search-and-rescue ships who goes by a single name, Eko, said that fishermen found cables and pieces of metal in the water.

“The fishermen told us that they found them shortly after they heard an explosion like the sound of thunder,” Eko was quoted by TVOne as saying, adding that aviation fuel was found in the location where the fishermen found the debris.

Aji said no radio beacon signal had been detected from the 26-year-old plane. He said his agency was investigating why the plane's emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, was not transmitting a signal that could confirm whether it had crashed.

“The satellite system owned by neighboring Australia also did not pick up on the ELT signal from the missing plane,” Aji said.

Tracking service Flightradar24 said on its Twitter feed that Flight SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) of altitude in less than a minute, about four minutes after takeoff.

Television footage showed relatives and friends of people aboard the plane weeping, praying and hugging each other as they waited at airports in Jakarta and Pontianak.

Chicago-based Boeing said on its Twitter feed that it was aware of the incident. It said it was closely monitoring the situation and “working to gather more information.”

The twin-engine, single aisle Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most popular planes for short and medium-haul flights. The 737-500 is a shorter version of the widely used 737 model. Airlines began using this type of plane in the 1990s, with production ending two decades ago.

Sriwijaya began operations in 2003 and flies to more than 50 destinations in Indonesia and a handful of nearby countries, according to its website. Its fleet includes a variety of 737 variants as well as the regional ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop plane.

The airline has had a solid safety record until now, with no onboard casualties in four incidents recorded on the Aviation Safety Network database, though a farmer was killed when a Boeing 737-200 left the runway in 2008 following a hydraulic problem.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation, with more than 260 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air because of overcrowding on ferries, aging infrastructure and poorly enforced safety standards.

In October 2018, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved in Saturday's incident did not have the automated flight-control system that played a role in the Lion Air crash and another crash of a 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia five months later, leading to the grounding of the MAX 8 for 20 months.

The Lion Air crash was Indonesia's worst airline disaster since 1997, when 234 people were killed on a Garuda airlines flight near Medan on Sumatra island. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing 162 people.

Indonesian airlines were previously banned from flying to the United States and European Union for not meeting international safety standards. Both have since lifted the ban, citing improvement in aviation safety and greater compliance with international standards.

United Airlines is trying to bring back supersonic travel. They announced a deal this week with a Denver-area start-up called Boom Supersonic.

It announced it's buying 15 new jets from a Denver startup.

The jets would carry between 65 to 88 people at a speed of Mach 1.7 and it would cut flight times almost in half.

A flight from New York to London would be 3.5 hours compared to the normal 6.5 hours.

The planes have not been built yet. United plans to have passengers on-board by 2029. It's been nearly 20 years since the Concorde supersonic plane was retired.

Robin Dich and Alex Livingston contributed to this report.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KSHB) - A group of Kansas City-area healthcare workers was in the right spot at the right time Wednesday.

The right spot just happened to be on a Hawaii-bound flight in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The right time just happened to be when a fellow traveler went into labor in the airplane bathroom.

“This lady just starts screaming, 'Oh my God, we need help, doctor, medical, oh my God,' she’s like freaking out," LAni Bamfield, a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday in recalling the event.

Bamfield, along with two other neonatal intensive care unit nurses, a physician assistant and a family medicine doctor, took to social media to document their efforts to help a mother deliver her baby 27 weeks into term.

“We’re used to stressful situations, but not like this. In a controlled environment where we have equipment. So, we were very focused and we just looked up to the flight attendant and Amanda’s like, can we turn around to Sacramento, what’s closer, can we get somewhere now,” Mimi Ho, also a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday.

At the time of the medical emergency, the flight still had three more hours of travel before landing in Hawaii.

“I think we were just kind of nervous that there was an emergency and we’re over the ocean and that like there was no where to go," passenger Tesha Thomas said.

As passengers learned of the birth, they began gathering items the medical professionals needed.

When the flight landed, medical staff were on the tarmac waiting to take mother and baby boy to the hospital.

“He’s stable, they don’t have a name yet since she wasn’t expecting to have a baby really, but the nurses and doctors have nicknamed him Jet at the hospital," Ho said.

This story originally reported by McKenzie Nelson on KSHB.com.