Posted on 01/07/2019 5:25:36 PM PST by lowbridge
“The Last Days of JFK Jr.,” a two-hour special promising new details and new interviews under the ABC News banner, aired Thursday night. Not only did the program soft-pedal Kennedy’s complete and utter fault for the crash but it got crucial details wrong — claiming that the FAA said flying conditions that night were “excellent” (according to the National Transportation Safety Board review of the crash, they were extremely poor, and JFK Jr. would have known it), and that his flight instructor was unavailable that night to fly with him. In fact, the NTSB report said one of Kennedy’s instructors did offer to fly with him, but Kennedy said no, that “he wanted to do it alone.”
-snip
Here’s what ABC didn’t report: The NTSB blamed JFK Jr. for the crash. He had less than an hour logged flying at night alone. Out of 310 hours logged, Kennedy had only 72 with a flight instructor, which, as The New York Times reported in July 2000, was considered “an unusually low number” by experts. The Times also reported that one pilot said that as he flew over Martha’s Vineyard that night, he thought the whole island had suffered a power outage, and that haze and visibility that night was as low as four miles. The Guardian reported that Kennedy’s certificate “forbade him to fly with visibility less than five miles.”
In the dark, with no horizon, Kennedy was unable to tell the sea from the land from the sky. He became confused: What the pilot may feel the plane is doing is actually different than what the instruments say, and he likely wound up in what’s called the graveyard spiral, plummeting 79 feet per second toward the ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
JFK and his wife were not flying to Martha's Vineyard. They were destined for Hyannis Port -- on the Massachusetts mainland -- but were headed to Martha's Vineyard to drop off the sister on the way.
As soon as I heard that it was flight at over water at dusk, I knew exactly what happened. The first report I read said that his flight instructor was with him. That made me wonder. But then when later reports said his instructor was not there, it made sense.
He got disoriented. Pretty much standard procedure for a low time, non-instrument trained pilot. There are few good visual references in an over-water flight at dusk. Conditions didn’t have to be bad.
Chuck Yeager
I once saw fat b@st@rd Ted The Lifeguard Kennedy on the floor of the Senate. His face/head looked at least 50% larger than it should have been compared to his body.
I’ve seen a lot of photos of Jackie, IMHO her head/face was too big for her body also.
Bush AND Clinton. NWO killed the son just like the father.
Yep!
I remember getting up early that morning. FOX was covering the recovery at that time. Most of the video was being taken from a helicopter. I took one look at the visibility and flight conditions and told my wife, spatial disorientation. He had no business flying VFR in those conditions. IMHO.
You are right. He didn’t have his instrument rating which is crucial to be a good pilot as you know. Flying over water at night in clouds for a terribly inexperienced pilot was just plain stupid, arrogant.
Kennedys and the internal combustion engine have never played well together.
“I’m so old I remember when Kennedys killed their women one at a time.”
Cheating wife, failing business, sister in law letting the wife f*** her old boyfriend and get high in her apartment, takes a trip he took 35 times. 34 were all the same, number 35 avoided any radio contact.
No question it was a murder suicide.
Kennedy wanted the Senate seat. What offed him was his intention to come out of the closet as a Republican.
One does not develop intelligence when one has no need for it
There are Old pilots and there are Bold Pilots. There are no old, bold pilots.
He would have been a bold pilot had he defied his mother and joined the Air Force like he’d wanted to and learned how to fly on instruments. He was out there with no vector with too much airplane.
The V-tail Bonanza was nicknamed "The doctor killer" because that was a very popular aircraft for them. It was fast and pricey. Some said the v-tail was too weak but flying the plane within the published envelope was as safe as any other aircraft.
The plane got a bad rap but many people said that the overconfidence in people like doctors made them fly their planes into weather and situations that others would not dare to fly.
I would imagine the Piper six seater he was flying had an autopilot. I owned a Beechcraft A-36 back in those days, which was pretty much the equivalent of the Piper Kennedy was flying. My aircraft had an autopilot and I would assume Kennedy’s plane had one also.
Even though he was not instrument rated, he certainly should have known how to use the autopilot and could have made a safe descent.
You speak the truth. BTW, vero beach dodgertown bump. Still remember eastern airlines flying into vero a kid.
>“I’m so old I remember when Kennedys killed their women one at a time.”
I’m sure John John struggled through his upwardly-mobile mind for any trace of information that might have helped him survive that ordeal. In a tiny crevice of his brain, he recalled a time when his Uncle/Godfather Ted gave him some
advice when he was still a young lad.
“Remember, John John....”, the image of Ted would say, “....in a water landing, any nearby bitch will make for a good flotation device”.
In 1944, before taking off on his last mission -- flying a plane full of explosives into the German installation where the London Guns were under construction, with a plan to bail out just in time -- he was asked by one of his buddies, "Joe, you got insurance?" Joseph Jr beamed and said, "Kennedys don't need insurance." [from a JFK bio around here somewhere]
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