Word: hazings
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John Kennedy Jr., as pilot in command of a small but powerful single-engine plane, should never have taken off in coming haze and darkness without an instrument rating. The tragedy that took the lives of his passengers and blighted those of their families could have and should have been avoided. ANNE DUTHOIT Paris...
...been comfortable, even cozy. Heading east, across the Hudson and in the direction of Long Island Sound, Kennedy climbed to 5,600 ft., the typical altitude for small planes traveling by visual flight rules. To the left, the light-flecked coast of southern Connecticut was probably visible through the haze, as first Bridgeport, then New Haven, then New London provided a sort of luminous archipelago pointing east. The noise of the engine and the wind would have made it difficult for the occupants to talk to one another, but the plane was equipped with headphones that would have made conversation...
...clearly up against it. Night was falling, and he had two stops to make that evening: one in Martha's Vineyard to drop off Lauren, then on to Hyannis Port. Earlier, Kyle Bailey, a local pilot, had canceled a planned flight from Essex because of a troubling haze that had already reduced visibility. Bailey decided to ground himself when he looked off in the distance for a familiar mountain ridge but couldn't see it. "That is a test that most pilots use at the airport," he says...
Kennedy had to keep his attention elsewhere, and after a while, what he was seeing could not have pleased him. The haze that surrounded his plane as he first climbed into the sky did not disperse, largely obscuring the fingernail paring of a moon that was out that evening. Stars were probably erased completely. Up and down the New England coast, other pilots began flying into the same soup. A number of them radioed the FAA for permission to land at alternative, inland airports, where visibility was better. But Kennedy, who never made radio contact throughout the trip, pressed...
...unclear why the plane was descending so quickly, but Kennedy may have been trying to drop below the haze. For nearly five minutes, the plane's descent continued at this relatively steep rate, losing about two-thirds of its altitude until it was just 2,300 ft. above the Atlantic wavetops. Martha's Vineyard was by now only 20 miles away, but if the Piper kept dropping at this rate, it would hit ocean well before it reached the landing strip. For a pilot flying in better conditions--even an inexperienced pilot--the next step would be obvious: look...