Should He Have Flown?

Even as tears were being shed and tributes read following the crash of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane, a troubling question became hard to ignore: Should he have taken off that night? In a family famous for its appetite for risk, Kennedy was far from the most reckless. Yet he didn’t shrink from pushing the edge of his personal envelope. Last Friday he may have pushed too far, as a deadly combination of too much airplane and too green a pilot apparently proved disastrous.

When the first details of the crash of Kennedy’s Piper Saratoga emerged on Saturday, some experienced pilots refused to criticize his flying, since no one yet knows whether something as simple as mechanical failure caused the accident. Others, however, nodded sadly to themselves at what seemed to be Kennedy’s disregard for a few basic rules of aviation safety. A licensed pilot for only a year, he nonetheless took off without filing a flight plan–something the Federal Aviation Administration does not require but that many pilots do take a moment to do. He took off from Essex County Airport in Fairfield, N.J., at sunset and thus flew most of his route in darkness, even though it’s not certain he was rated for the tricky instrument piloting that allows seasoned aviators to fly essentially blind. Worst of all, he was flying a muscled-up, high-performance airplane that requires a butterfly touch–something Kennedy may not yet have acquired. “It’s a lot of airplane for an inexperienced pilot to handle,” said a pilot who works for the FAA, “especially at night and especially over water.”

What makes the Saratoga such a handful is its speed. With a velocity that can exceed 200 m.p.h., it’s a good 50% faster than many simpler planes. At that kind of clip, things can go wrong in a hurry. According to some reports, radar briefly picked up Kennedy’s plane at 2,200 ft. and then, just 12 seconds later, at 1,300 ft., meaning it was plunging toward the water at 4,500 ft. per minute. “I would consider that out of control,” says Alan Leiwant, a professional pilot who frequently uses Essex Airport.

While it’s possible that Kennedy’s lack of experience may actually have worked in his favor, since his recent training would have freshly equipped him to deal with such emergencies, some of his other actions are open to question. Traveling from Fairfield to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., pilots follow one of two flight paths. The easier, safer route hugs the southern coast of Connecticut, keeping the plane within the comforting sight of land most of the time. The trickier one follows the line of Long Island, then sails out over water, passing only the relative lily pad of Block Island before reaching Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy chose the water route, and that may have been his undoing. “Fifteen or 20 miles over water is daunting in daylight,” says Joe Orlando, an Essex pilot who met Kennedy on the flight strip a few months ago. “At night it’s terrifying.” Making things worse, much of the East Coast was under a heat-wave haze, reducing visibility even further.

That Kennedy proceeded despite these dangers did not surprise some people. Stories circulated last week that friends and family members feared for his safety every time he climbed into the cockpit. Recently a colleague demurred when Kennedy offered him a lift from Boston to New York, explaining that he felt uncomfortable in single-engine airplanes. Kennedy shrugged off the concern. “When you have two [engines],” he reportedly said, “if one goes out, it’s very difficult to steer the plane, because the other one is working.” Of course, if one goes out when you have only one, you’re left with none at all.

After the crash, much was also made of the fact that Kennedy was flying with a bad ankle, having broken it while parasailing over the Memorial Day weekend. Those concerns may have been overstated. The Saratoga does have foot-pedal controls, which require at least some degree of ankle agility to operate. But they come into play only during takeoffs and landings, which are the riskiest parts of any flight. By all accounts, however, Kennedy had no trouble leaving the runway; sadly, he never got a chance to land.

For the Kennedy family–and for a nation shocked at yet another tragedy striking so star-crossed a clan–determining the causes of the crash is, for now, utterly beside the point. Other amateur pilots may learn from Kennedy’s possible mistakes, but that will have to wait. For now, the price of that knowledge seems heartbreakingly high.

–Reported by William Dowell/Fairfield and Mark Thompson/Washington