John F. Kennedy Jr.

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. (November 25, 1960 – July 16, 1999), often referred to as John F. Kennedy, Jr., JFK Jr., John Jr. or John-John was an American lawyer, journalist, and publisher. He was the son of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

Death

On July 16, 1999, Kennedy died aged 38, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Carolyn's sister, Lauren Bessette, when the aircraft he was piloting, N9253N, a Piper Saratoga II HP, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean eight miles from Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy and his wife were dropping off Lauren Bessette on Martha's Vineyard before heading to Hyannis Port to attend the wedding of cousin Rory Kennedy, which was subsequently delayed as a result of the accident.

Kennedy was considered a competent, cautious pilot by his instructors and had well over 300 hours of flight experience. He trained in low wing Piper airplanes at Flight School International, one of the best training academies in the world. As soon as he graduated, he bought a high performance Cessna Skylane with variable pitch prop. Half of his total hours were in high performance airplanes. He often chose to fly at night and accumulated about one third of his hours at night since getting his license fifteen months before the crash. The average general aviation pilot only flies five percent or less of the time at night. He had flown that route about forty times, half of them without an instructor, and about a third of them at night, including several instrument landings (with an instrument rated instructor as safety pilot, of course). He was not instrument rated, but had completed the ground school course and passed the written test for his instrument rating. He then completed twelve of the twenty-five in-flight instrument training lessons. When he bought the Piper Saratoga in April, 1999, it had retractable landing gear and required him to qualify for a complex airplane endorsement, which he received in May, 1999.

Despite all the gossip media hype (including the NTSB report), Kennedy 's flight was not delayed by Friday afternoon traffic, because Lauren Bessette had to work late, nor by Carolyn's fastidious nail color choice. Kennedy went to the gym at 6PM, met Lauren at his office at the arranged time of 6:30, received his weather advisory for the flight from his office computer, then left for the airport at 6:45. Carolyn joined John and Lauren at the airport before 8PM, yet they did not depart until 8:38. The wedding wasn't until the following day, and if conditions at Martha's Vineyard appeared difficult, there would be little consequence for them to simply continue on to Hyannis Port with Lauren. The Kennedy's have an estate in Hyannis Port, it's not like they would have to put Lauren up in a motel. John and Carolyn were planning to fly to Martha's Vineyard right after the wedding, anyway, to spend the rest of the weekend at his Martha's Vineyard estate. Lauren had no pressing commitment on Martha's Vineyard Friday night, she was simply visiting friends. There was no 'get-there-itis' involved here.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation found no evidence of mechanical malfunction in airframe, systems, avionics, or engine, and determined that the probable cause was "the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze, and the dark night." While acknowledging VFR conditions, the report claims that the lack of lights over water at night can lead to disorientation. However, there were several bright lighthouses in the area. The brightest of these is Gay Head Lighthouse, a primary seacoast light with an actual visual range of 28 miles in those meteorological conditions.

The NTSB report only included pilot accounts that indicated visual impairment due to haze that evening, ignoring all reports by pilots that experienced little difficulty with weather conditions. Since the winds were from the southwest, a northeast approach to the airport was required. Kennedy flew almost due east, well north of Martha's Vineyard about seven miles off the Rhode Island/Massachusetts coast until he was within three miles of Buzzards Bay Light Tower. At that point, he turned south to fly parallel to the shore of Gay Head, and then made another turn due east again, lining up with the south shore of Martha's Vineyard. No one knows for sure why he chose this longer route, but apparently he wanted to overfly his summer estate, as he often did. His airplane had just achieved wings level attitude from this last turn when it veered off into a tight right turn and crashed into the sea less than 45 seconds later.

During the memorial service on July 23, Kennedy's uncle, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, said that, "We dared to think...that this John Kennedy would live to comb grey hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But, like his father, he had every gift but length of years." And of his nephew's marriage, he invoked what had been said of his brother's presidency: both lasted 1,000 days. U.S. President Bill Clinton attended the service, and ordered that the flag at the White House be lowered to half-mast in honour of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

A large undisclosed payment was made to the Bessette family from the Kennedy family. It is reported that this payment was made to avoid a possible highly media-covered lawsuit, since the NTSB claims the accident was probably the result of human error.

Curse

Many people cite the alleged "Kennedy Family Curse" as the cause for his death. This, of course, is refering to the following events as proof of a curse:

• 1941 - Rosemary Kennedy, already suffering from mild mental retardation, underwent an experimental surgery with the intention of treating her increasingly violent mood swings. The

results of the lobotomy were disastrous, and she remained in an institution until her death in 2005.

• 1944 - Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the eldest son of the Kennedy patriarch Joseph Kennedy, is killed over the English Channel while flying a mission during World War II.
• 1948 - Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, dies in a plane crash in France.
• 1955 - Jacqueline Kennedy suffers a miscarriage.
• 1956 - Jacqueline Kennedy gives birth to a stillborn daughter. (Although the daughter was unnamed and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to her parents with a marker reading "Daughter" later reports indicated that the Kennedys had intended to call her "Arabella Kennedy").
• December 19, 1961 - Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch, suffers a greatly disabling stroke which makes movement and communication extremely difficult and limited until his death.
• August 7, 1963 - Patrick Bouvier Kennedy , the second son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, dies two days after his birth, nearly six weeks premature.
• November 22, 1963 - President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas (see John F. Kennedy assassination).
• 1964 - Ted Kennedy is in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II (D-Ind.) and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.
• June 6, 1968 - Robert F. Kennedy, brother to both John and Ted, is assassinated in Los Angeles, immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary (see Robert F. Kennedy assassination).
• 1969 - "Chappaquiddick Incident" - A car driven by Ted Kennedy goes off a bridge. Mary Jo Kopechne, a former aide to Robert Kennedy, dies in the accident.
• 1973 - Edward Kennedy, Jr. At the age of twelve loses his right leg due to bone cancer.
• 1973 - Joseph P. Kennedy II, son of Robert and Ethel, is the driver in a Cape Cod car accident that leaves one passenger permanently paralyzed.
• 1973 - Alexander Onassis, stepson of Jacqueline Kennedy, dies in a plane crash.
• 1984 - David A. Kennedy, another son of Robert, dies from a Demerol and cocaine overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.
• 1997 - Michael Kennedy, son of Robert dies in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado.
• 1999 - John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Carolyn's sister Lauren Bessette, died when the private plane Kennedy was piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean on a hazy evening en route from Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard.