Word: hazing
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...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...
...York around 8:25; the plane took off at 8:38, a Piper Saratoga large enough for six people but carrying only three. It turned north, then east, as the temperature began to dip and the haze thickened around the islands and fingers of Massachusetts. The flight was supposed to take a little more than an hour...
...making a second turn to the right and starting a precipitous plunge that may have exceeded 5,000 feet per minute, 10 times the normal speed. "A pilot not rated to fly by instruments can very easily lose his orientation when the horizon disappears in the darkness and the haze," says TIME aviation correspondent Jerry Hannifin. "In that situation, the pilot has a responsibility to turn back." Alas, turning back was not John Kennedy...
...plane was out of control. To TIME aviation correspondent Jerry Hannifin, that final plummet is a sign that the pilot simply took on more than he was qualified for. "Anyone who has flown regularly on the East Coast in summer knows that the horizon can disappear completely in the haze," says Hannifin. One scenario: Kennedy began a normal turn, and then lost sight of the horizon. If he made the turn too tight, he could have lost lift. From there it would be straight down, and fast. "The poor guy wasn?t rated for an instrument flight," says Hannifin. "When...
...Should that fast-flying Piper Saratoga have taken off at all? The witness of the moment is the last man to see the handsome scion alive: Kyle Bailey, another pilot who was planning a similar Friday evening jaunt. Bailey saw the haze and the fast-approaching dark and decided to stay on the ground. Kennedy was a green pilot, his license a year old, and was rated to fly visually, but not by instruments, which would be required in poor visibility. Perhaps John Jr. was thinking of his waiting family, of his cousin?s wedding, or the ride to Martha...