Word: piloting
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...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...
...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...
John Kennedy Jr. loved to fly. After he got his pilot's license last year he would ask people if they wanted to come along, could he give them a lift somewhere. But most of us don't need to go where he did--to a place where he could get away, off camera, out of the bubble, on his own. Most often he headed up to the house his mother had left him on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., a place so special, so private, the houses far back from the road, the beaches so peaceful. Until last Saturday afternoon...