- Date:
- July 16, 1999
John F. Kennedy, Jr., plane crash
What caused John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane crash?
Was John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s body found in the plane crash?
What were John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s last words?
Did John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane have a black box?
Did John F. Kennedy, Jr., know his plane was crashing?
On the night of July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette were killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, while en route to a family wedding. The plane was piloted by Kennedy, a magazine publisher and the son of former U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy (later Onassis). Even before the crash was confirmed and the bodies recovered, the tragedy was a major news story, with reports that Kennedy’s plane had vanished into the night. Search efforts took several days to find the plane and the victims. The crash led to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which concluded that Kennedy experienced “spatial disorientation” in the moments before the crash, with haze and darkness as contributing factors.
Events before takeoff
The Kennedys were invited to the July 17 wedding of Kennedy’s cousin Rory Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The couple planned to travel to the event by flying from Essex County Airport near Caldwell, New Jersey, to Barnstable Municipal-Boardman/Polando Field in Hyannis, Massachusetts, aboard Kennedy’s six-seat, single-engine, low-wing airplane—a red-and-white Piper Saratoga that had recently passed its annual inspection. A couple of days before the flight, Lauren Bessette arranged to join her sister and brother-in-law so that she could be dropped off at Martha’s Vineyard, where she planned to spend the weekend with friends.
Rumors circulated that the flight to Martha’s Vineyard was delayed because Bessette Kennedy, a former fashion executive admired for her impeccable style, had spent hours at a pedicure appointment and shopping for a dress. In Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (2024), author Elizabeth Beller debunks this, noting that witnesses saw Bessette Kennedy leave her appointment by 5 pm.
The group had a late start from New York City on Friday, July 16. Kennedy and his sister-in-law, a financial executive for Morgan Stanley, met at the Midtown Manhattan office of his magazine, George, and left for the airport in Kennedy’s car about 15 minutes after their planned departure of 6:30 pm. They were delayed by heavy traffic and reached the airfield about 8 pm, a few minutes before Bessette Kennedy, who arrived in a separate car and was also running late because of the traffic. Their late arrival meant that they would be flying in darkness.
Timeline of the flight and crash
The plane took off at 8:38 pm, after sunset, and headed south a short distance before banking left, beginning the 200-mile (320-km) journey northeast at a cruising altitude of 5,500 feet (1,676 meters). With a top speed of 191 miles (307 km) per hour, the Piper Saratoga should have made it to Martha’s Vineyard in a little more than an hour.
The plane soon encountered haze. About 9:26 pm the plane passed by Westerly, Rhode Island, and was quickly flying over the Rhode Island Sound—and over the open ocean. A few minutes later Kennedy began descending at a rate of about 700 feet (213 meters) a minute, reaching an altitude of 2,200 feet (670 meters) above the water. It is believed that this descent, which was quicker than normal, may have been Kennedy’s attempt to get below the haze. However, continuing to drop at that rate put the plane in danger of hitting the ocean before reaching land. By this time, Martha’s Vineyard was about 20 miles (32 km) away.
About 9:38 pm the plane turned right, heading south, and began ascending. After about a minute the plane leveled off and was flying in a southeast direction, before turning left and climbing to 2,600 feet (792 meters). Kennedy then descended again, at a quicker rate than before. At 9:40:15 pm the plane pitched right again and nosedived toward the water at a speed of 4,700 feet (1,432 meters) per minute.
The last radar contact with the plane was at 9:40:34 pm. Less than a minute later, at 9:41 pm, the plane crashed nose first into the Atlantic. The crash site was about 8 miles (12 km) from the southwestern shore of Martha’s Vineyard.
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Rescue effort and discovery of the wreckage
Rescue operations began later than they should have. When Kennedy’s plane failed to arrive at Martha’s Vineyard Airport at the expected time of 10 pm, Bessette’s friends asked an airport employee named Adam Budd to investigate. Budd called a Federal Aviation Administration station in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and asked for tracking information about Kennedy’s plane, but he did not initially identify which airport he worked at and was told that tracking information could not be given over the phone. Authorities did not begin searching in earnest until after a Kennedy family friend contacted the Coast Guard station in nearby Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on Saturday, July 17, at 2:15 am.
Once the search began, however, it expanded swiftly. After a standard check to see whether Kennedy had landed at another airport, the Air National Guard and the Coast Guard dispatched planes, helicopters, and cutters along the plane’s flight path. These vehicles were later joined by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel outfitted with special radar-detection equipment and a Navy ship equipped with remote-operated vehicles. By the operation’s end, agencies in five states had been involved in the search effort.
- John F. Kennedy, Jr.: 38
- Lauren Bessette: 34
- Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: 33
That Saturday afternoon, debris from the plane began washing up on Martha’s Vineyard on Philbin Beach near Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head), causing authorities to narrow their focus to an area south of the town. Work continued until close to midnight Tuesday, July 20, when a remote-operated vehicle located the sunken fuselage of Kennedy’s airplane about 8 miles (12 km) offshore. It was submerged about 120 feet (35 meters) deep. The victims, who were still strapped into their seats, were brought to the surface the next day at roughly 4:30 pm. Autopsies revealed that all three had died upon the plane’s impact with the water.
Memorial services
At the request of Kennedy’s uncle Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the deceased’s ashes were transported back to the crash site aboard a missile destroyer on July 22 and scattered at sea after a short service with family members.
A larger memorial service for family and friends of the Kennedys was held on July 23 at the Church of St. Thomas More in New York City, and a private candlelight service for Lauren Bessette was held the following evening at Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, where the Bessette sisters grew up. In addition, New York’s Irish community held a public memorial service that week at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Manhattan.
Official accident report and causes of the crash
Nearly a year later, on July 6, 2000, the NTSB issued a report on the accident, which found that the plane crashed because of 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 the Piper Saratoga did not have a black box, investigators were able to reconstruct the flight using radar data.)
The report stopped short of claiming that Kennedy’s error stemmed from his piloting inexperience, but reporters and aviation experts pointed out that it played a role. Although Kennedy had started learning to fly in 1982, he did not receive his private pilot’s license until April 1998. By the time of the July 1999 flight, he had logged only 72 hours of flight time without the assistance of an instructor, most of which were in a different model of airplane. In his Piper Saratoga he had logged just 3 hours without an instructor, of which only 48 minutes were at night.
Moreover, Kennedy was only certified to fly under visual flight rules (VFR), meaning that in favorable weather conditions he could use the view outside his window as a guide. But as aviation experts pointed out, the horizon that day was not visible through the haze. With an instrument rating, which he did not have, Kennedy would have been more capable of flying in low-visibility weather by using his plane’s instruments. Lacking this ability, Kennedy was probably unable to tell whether his plane was level or whether it was banking, a state that could cause the plane to enter a fatal spiral.
Potentially adding to the danger, Kennedy had recently had a cast removed from his ankle after fracturing it while hang gliding in June. About two weeks before the crash, during another evening flight, his cast made it impossible for him to land the plane without the assistance of an instructor. Nevertheless, Kennedy declined the offer of an instructor to copilot on July 16, saying that he “wanted to do it alone.”
Additionally, he filed no flight plan, made no request that the flight be tracked, and maintained radio silence the entire flight.
Although the NTSB did not specifically fault or blame Kennedy for the accident, many people read its findings as an indictment of Kennedy’s judgment. Ann Freeman, mother of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Lauren Bessette, sued his estate “for the wrongful death and conscious pain and suffering” of her daughters. The parties settled in July 2001 for a reported $15 million.
The “Kennedy curse”
Discover more about the members of the Kennedy family, including an interactive family tree.
For many Americans the crash added to the considerable number of tragedies that have befallen the Kennedy family and fueled speculation about the so-called “Kennedy curse.”
Indeed, the Kennedys’ history of early deaths caused by accidents, assassinations (including those of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968), and other misfortunes was conveyed by Pres. Bill Clinton, who had extended the search for John F. Kennedy, Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette. Despite criticisms about the cost and scale of the effort, Clinton justified it “because of the role of the Kennedy family in our national life, and because of the enormous losses they have sustained in our lifetimes.”