[ml/nj]

John F. Kennedy Jr.

You're simply wrong about JFK,Jr. His own hubris and stupidity killed him. I (used to) fly regularly from Caldwell Airport to Nantucket, but not regularly enough to fly a Saratoga (powerful, single engine plane) with less than two hours PIC under my belt. You say it was VFR, which it was at CDW, but once you get over the water at night you better be flying IFR. There are few visual clues to what is going on, and it's very easy to blunder into a cloud. JFK,Jr. was an accident waiting to happen.

ML/NJ

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Well, he did try to lighten the load by dumping luggage for miles before the crash.

Nothing to see here.

[investigateworld]

You say it was VFR, which it was at CDW, but once you get over the water at night you better be flying IFR. There are few visual clues to what is going on, and it's very easy to blunder into a cloud. JFK,Jr. was an accident waiting to happen.

I'm inclined to agree with you. Our Navy lost more planes to accidents than the IJ Army/Navy shot down. Night flying is tricky ( I got a whole ten hours of it, 3 over sea)
OTOH, with three people in the cockpit, it should have been less risky.It's sooooo easy to put a slow acting adhesive into the air intake tube for the instruments..... People can laugh, but after seeing a judge order Barry Seal to be at a halfway house at a certain time every day, there are some series players out there.