According to Passur, the flight took off about 15 seconds before 6:50PM on Runway 22R, and flew straight out over Jamaica Bay, over the Rockaways, and across the Atlantic Ocean to just south of Sandy Hook, NJ. Typical flight path for a plane going southwest out of JFK.
According to PASSUR, the aircraft that took off directly before AWE 17 was Delta flight 2029, a 757 bound for Orlando. Emirates flight 9900, a 747, followed AWE 17, bound for Gothenberg, Sweden.
According to PASSUR, AWE 17 flew within a few miles of but far below a Lear Jet 60 at (37,000 feet) and a Sun Country 737 getting ready to land at JFK (at 13,000 feet) while climbing over the Atlantic Ocean at 4000 feet.
According to Google Earth, there's marshland at the end of 22L before a departing flight would reach the Rockaway Peninsula. The Rockaways are about 4-5 blocks wide at the point the flight overflew it at around 2000 feet and climbing.
LiveATC.net's archives don't have the JFK tower or Approach/Departure tapes from the 15th. I think the JFK scanner link has been down for a while.
The sun is setting around 7:00 in New York these days. The
LiveATC.net radar shows that there were some heavy showers over parts of South Jersey, upstate New York, and east of Long Island at 7PM, but nothing near JFK.
