Actually, JFK Jr was the only one in the front of the airplane. His
wife and her sister were (if I remember the NTSB report correctly) in
the rearmost seats.

He had intended to make the trip in the daylight, but road traffic and
other circumstances delayed him. The leg from about Point Judith RI to
the Vineyard (Point Judith, btw, has a protected harbor called "Harbor
of Last Refuge" and I've taken refuge in it several times, the seas
where Long Island Sound and the Atlantic meet are not very pleasant for
a sailboat) is all over water and in the flight conditions he was in,
although probably marginal VFR, should be flown IFR. The Vineyard stop
was intended to drop off his sister in law (a bright and beautiful
investment banker, already a VP at a major investment house). He and
his wife were supposed to continue on to Cape Cod for a wedding. Had
the Vineyard leg been omitted, the trip would have been mostly over
land, with ground lights probably providing some outside reference.

As for the question about the book -- at least one was titled something
like The Night John Died.

The accident report is available on line at the NTSB site.






On Nov 21, 7:49 pm, "Dudley Henriques" wrote:
I've always believed that what nailed Kennedy was not his lack of
experience, which was ok at 310 hours, but his known problem with
multi-tasking. This coupled with spatial disorientation can be, and in my
opinion indeed was a killer.
I can only speculate on how deeply into his problem with cockpit
multi-tasking and overload his instructors at Flight Safety managed to go,
but I do understand he had these issues all through
his training.
Its very difficult for instructors when dealing in these areas. You
certainly can ascertain the problem exists with a student, and you can deal
with it, but in the end analysis, its extremely difficult if not impossible
for an instructor to predict how a student will react somewhere down the
line when suddenly faced with an actual multi-task overload.
I only have questions on this issue as pertains to the Kennedy accident, not
accusations. Its quite possible his instructors did all they could to solve
his issues, but this leaves me with the fact that regardless of the
instructor's role, I'm fairly well convinced that what killed Kennedy was
his poor preflight planning putting him in conditions and at a time of day
that he wasn't prepared to handle coupled with his on board reaction to an
actual spatial disorientation that overloaded him to the point that he
reacted contrary to his instrument training not shallowing the bank before
his pitch correction thus deepening his spiral.
Who knows actually what really happened? For all we know, the right front
seat pax might have had an object in their lap that interfered with his
effort to shallow the bank. No one will ever REALLY know. That's why we
always get the "probable cause".
Anyway, I for one will always have unanswered questions about the level the
instructor accepted somewhere along his learning curve from Kennedy as
acceptable performance concerning what the instructor absolutely had to know
was a multi-tasking overload issue.
Its just the way I approach the flight training issue I guess. Everybody in
the business has their own way of looking at these things.
Dudley Henriques

"Tony" wrote in ooglegroups.com...





Re JFK Jr's last flight: when you look at the prelim report you'll
notice he has had more dual time instruction than for example naval
pilots have total time when they're landing on carriers!

He was pretty well along on his instrument rating as well.

He was flying with a foot still not healed from a hang gliding
accident, and it seems fairly clear he turned off the auto pilot to
start down and pulled himself into a spiral. I think radar shows it was
less than a minute from 5500 feet to impact.

A book written about the event said his family didn't ever want to fly
with him

On Nov 21, 5:56 pm, "Dudley Henriques" wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATcox.net wrote in
...

It indicates that he didn't use it not that the CFIs didn't teach it.
From
the outcome of the flight I'd say there were probably several things
the
CFIs taught him that he either forgot or ignored.Actually, I've had a
problem with the CFI side of the Kennedy equation since
the day of the accident .
I know the area of the crash very well having flown up there myself many
times .
I've always had an issue with the fact that Kennedy wasn't as aware as he
should have been about the dangers of horizon loss in the area under
certain
weather conditions and at certain times of the day. I also wasn't at all
satisfied with his inability to avoid the loss of control situation that
apparently resulted in the loss of the airplane and its occupants both on
the planning end and during the operational end directly prior to the
crash.
This accident seemed literally riddled with contributing causes as indeed
is
the situation in many aircraft accidents.
Not that in my opinion it was the single contributing cause, but I'll
always
have an unanswered question in my mind about the quality of Kennedy's
flight
instruction during his training.
Dudley Henriques- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -