John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Besset: Your flight to death

It is Saturday, July 17, 1999, 2:42 p.m. German time when the urban announcement of the dpa news agency runs on the ticker: “Eil !!!!! Airplane – possibly John Kennedy Jr. on board.” There is not much information at the time. Only that the US Coast Guard is looking for a missing private plane that should have landed on the Picturesque island of Martha’s Vineyard in the US state of Massachusetts on the Atlantic coast the evening before.

Gradually, the indications that the 38-year-old himself was at the wheel of the machine. Together with him, his wife Carolyn Besetette-Kennedy, 33, and whose sister Lauren, one year older, were also on board. The couple was on their way to the wedding of Kennedy’s cousin Rory in Hyannisport. In Martha’s Vineyard they wanted to stop taking Carolyn’s sister and then fly on.

The plane initially disappears. Only a suitcase is washed up on the south coast of the holiday island a little later – the name Lauren Besset is on the luggage trailer. Shortly afterwards, debris is also discovered in the Atlantic. But only in the late evening of July 20, at 11:30 p.m. local time, divers find the wreck at a depth of 35 meters – almost twelve kilometers southwest of the island. The bad view on the sea floor makes the work of the rescue workers more difficult. Due to the freezing cold and the strong currents, the divers can only be used for 15 minutes each. Finally you will find the corpses of the three inmates – still buckled up in your seats, Kennedy still in the cockpit.

John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the murdered former US President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline “Jackie” Kennedy Onassis, bought the plane only two and a half months ago. It is in a technically perfect condition and was waited four weeks earlier.

Kennedy has only had a private pilot license since April 22, 1998. He does not have an authorization to fly, which is why he can only fly according to visual flight rules. The weather conditions are good on departure, but that should change quickly.

Kennedy completed about 310 flight hours by the time of the accident, 55 hours at night. Nevertheless, he has relatively little experience: without a flight instructor he was only about 72 hours, as the transport security authority National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later estimates. However, he is familiar with the route between the Essex County Airport and Martha’s Vineyard. In the previous 15 months he flew them 35 times – 17 times without a flight instructor and at least five times at night.

When Kennedy picks up his sister -in -law Lauren from her work in the New York district of Manhattan that at around 6 p.m. to drive to the airport with her. His political magazine “George” is in financial difficulties. His marriage to Carolyn Besset, a former PR agent, also seems at the end.

Kennedy has been living in a hotel temporarily a few days ago. The evening before, his sister -in -law is said to have moved the couple to a pronunciation. Lauren is present as an intermediary. Carolyn does not want to fly because of the marriage crisis, but Lauren can change her mind. Since Carolyn still has to make errands during the day, the two meet directly at the airport the next day.

While Kennedy takes a seat in the cockpit, Carolyn and Lauren make themselves comfortable on the back seats. Normally, the flight duration is one and a half hours. The start for 6 p.m. was actually planned, but the dense afternoon traffic, which is unusually dense on this sultry, delays the arrival at the airport by around an hour. In addition, Kennedy broke the left ankle six weeks earlier and is dependent on crutches. So it takes time for the luggage to stow and the plane is ready to go. The tower from the Essex County Airport in Caldwell, New Jersey, will give him the starting release at 8:38 p.m. At this point it already dawns.

Shortly after the start, Kennedy turns northeast and follows the coastline of Connecticut. He opts for the faster route over the sea arm Long Island Sound and then directly over the open water towards Martha’s Vineyard. The flight height initially varies between 1200 (365 meters) and 1900 feet (579 meters) before rising to a travel flight height of 5500 feet (1676 meters).

At 9:33 p.m. it begins with the piper Pa-32R-301 Saratoga II. About five minutes later, the plane is only 2100 feet (640 meters) high-now above the open Atlantic and, removing, illuminated buildings. It is this. Other pilots who fly the same route that evening later report that they could not recognize a horizon line and lay strong haze above the water. Kennedy has also set the false frequencies on both radio devices – so it shows later investigations – it cannot receive any current weather data.

In an unusually long right curve, the flight and sinking speed of the Piper Saratoga suddenly increase rapidly. A clear sign that he has lost his spatial perception. The equilibrium organ in the inner ear in the inner ear can send false signals in particular, the pilot believes that the equilibrium can fly straight ahead, even though the plane gets into a curve. The last radar contact is available at 9:40 p.m.: The aircraft drops to only 1100 feet (335 meters) per minute with over 4700 feet (1432 meters). The instruments show a pens of 125 degrees and one nose down by 30 degrees.

Kennedy has apparently got into a spiral -shaped dive. The piper strikes around 86 km/h on the water – with the right wing first. Since it does not set an emergency call and the engine runs with full power until the end, the authorities assume that it has gotten into a so -called “Graveyard Spiral”. An uncontrolled downward spiral, in which the pilot has the feeling of flying straight ahead, but actually steeper is actually falling steeper. The impact of the machine is so violent that all three occupants are immediately dead.

A year after the crash, investigators also come to the realization in their official final report that the cause was a pilot error. It is said that Kennedy has lost the “spatial orientation”. Therefore, he was unable to keep control while dropping the machine. A technical defect is excluded.

The corpses of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessetet-Kennedy and Lauren Besset are cremated a day after the rescue and buried at sea in a private ceremony. Two Navy chaplains and a Catholic priest are present when family members scatter the ashes of the deceased near the crash site on the US destroyer “USS Briscoe”.

For the private funeral service on July 23 in the St. Thomas More Church in Manhattan, only a small circle is invited. Among the funeral guests are the then US President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary and daughter Chelsea. Wyclef Jean sings the reggae anthem “many rivers to cross”. Lauren is adopted a day later in a separate commemoration in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her parents don’t want her to be forgotten in the media vertebrae for the Kennedys.