John F Kennedy Jr’s style was sloppy

Reach over the seat back and PUSH THE BUTTON, after all, it was a life or death choice. The radar track makes it obvious the A/P was on for the whole flight until preparing to approach the airport. Perfectly straight.

My instructor had some uncomplimentary things to say about the difference between having the money to fly, and having the skills to fly.
 
As for dress, and style , I can tell you my personal experience on year at Oshkosh. John Jr was a licensed in instructor in powered parachutes. I was down near the ultralite runway and we heard from someone that he was on the field. A few minutes later he came walking by. I was very impressed that he was just another guy, he didn't have a security guard or escort or pr man or even a golf cart. Just a guy, except for the wave of ladies around him about 15 deep and like a swarm of locust with John in the middle. And these ladies were from 9 to 90. I was 10 feet away and if you don't think he was handsome ask any female who was there. It was like a guru and he wasn't making any speech or any scene, just walking north. And as for as those clothes when he is walking in NY that is high end and it looks like it fits pretty well to me.

The loss of John and the girls in night imc weather was very sad, but it is in awful taste to make this anything about someone's wealth. His CFI said that John was doing his ifr training, had I think 30 hours and was getting near to taking his test for the rating.
I have 5000 hours and i doubt if I would have flown that route that late in the day in that weather.
 
Uh, that's my sartorial style too.

I wore navy blue wool suits with neckties for most of my working career, but dressed pretty much like John-John when I wasn't working. I've dressed that way all the time since I retired in 2003.
 
Bill Greenwood said:
His CFI said that John was doing his ifr training, had I think 30 hours and was getting near to taking his test for the rating.
I have 5000 hours and i doubt if I would have flown that route that late in the day in that weather.
Click to expand...

Basically night VFR over water with haze, correct? So he becomes spatially disoriented and was not able to recover from an unusual attitude using instruments, isn’t that correct?

I know it can be very confusing, possibly create panic when you realize the airplane is in a very messed up attitude, and the steps to recovery need to be practiced and nearly automatic. I guess he just didn’t have the recovery steps wired?
 
Stan Cooper said:
Uh, that's my sartorial style too.

I wore navy blue wool suits with neckties for most of my working career, but dressed pretty much like John-John when I wasn't working. I've dressed that way all the time since I retired in 2003.
Click to expand...

Do you have waves of women following you also? I really do hope we can meet sometime soon
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
I suspect the editors who wrote the headline about his dress did not realize how he might be characterized as sloppy in other ways.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but most of the GA pilots I know definitely did not just step out of GQ. If I don’t have to dress up, I’m perfectly happy in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals.
 
At the risk of going against the grain, I would contend that JFK, Jr. was an "average" pilot, not a particularly sloppy one (if that's the inference, about "ironic") and I suspect that his manner of dress was more "rebellious" than it was careless. There are a lot of righteous pilots who love to characterize his accident an act of "stupidity" or "wealthy arrogance" or one of many other derogatory terms, but I think it related primarily to his failure to understand how the haze at night, while not IMC, would require IFR skills for the descent. Having flown into KMVY the following day, before the wreckage was even located, it was easy to see how ground reference would have been lost at night.

I'm convinced that had he realized the impending hazard he could have simply remained at altitude until he was actually over the island, then circled down to a safe altitude and landing in the VMC conditions.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Do you have waves of women following you also? I really do hope we can meet sometime soon
Click to expand...
Heh. Only the women who insisted I was Jim Morrison (in spite of my repeated denials). I never thought there was much of a resemblance.

1972StanHelmethead.jpg
 
dbahn said:
At the risk of going against the grain, I would contend that JFK, Jr. was an "average" pilot, not a particularly sloppy one (if that's the inference, about "ironic") and I suspect that his manner of dress was more "rebellious" than it was careless. There are a lot of righteous pilots who love to characterize his accident an act of "stupidity" or "wealthy arrogance" or one of many other derogatory terms, but I think it related primarily to his failure to understand how the haze at night, while not IMC, would require IFR skills for the descent. Having flown into KMVY the following day, before the wreckage was even located, it was easy to see how ground reference would have been lost at night.

I'm convinced that had he realized the impending hazard he could have simply remained at altitude until he was actually over the island, then circled down to a safe altitude and landing in the VMC conditions.
Click to expand...

His CFI told him he wanted to tag along, JFK said no, I want to do it myself.

JFK had a broken foot in a mobility boot. He could not even climb into the plane, he had to sit and slide backwards up the wing to get into the seat.

He had at least 2 chances to divert safely. He chose to keep flying into bad weather.

Those are just 3 links in a bad chain of events.
 
dbahn said:
.. but I think it related primarily to his failure to understand how the haze at night, while not IMC, would require IFR skills for the descent.
Click to expand...

More of an error in ADM then? I guess he had flown this route a fair number of times in better conditions, which may have led to complacency about the night conditions, which were not originally planned.

I don’t know that I would have planned such a flight in similar conditions, but I agree that it seems like the sort of error an average pilot could let sneak up on them. OTOH, I started instrument training pretty much right after private, so didn’t have to consider decisions like that for very long.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
More of an error in ADM then? I guess he had flown this route a fair number of times in better conditions, which may have led to complacency about the night conditions, which were not originally planned.

I don’t know that I would have planned such a flight in similar conditions, but I agree that it seems like the sort of error an average pilot could let sneak up on them. OTOH, I started instrument training pretty much right after private, so didn’t have to consider decisions like that for very long.
Click to expand...

If I remember the report correctly he had about 30 hours in that airplane, of that he had less than 3 hours without a CFI. And he didn’t even have an hour of night time logged in the plane.

He wasn’t night current to carry passengers.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
More of an error in ADM then?
Click to expand...

Technically, I think an error in risk management, but in risk management you need to understand the risks in the first place. I don't think he did, and maybe that's the lesson to be learned rather than, "Don't be stupid".
 
The MzeroA video certainly puts a lot of blame on decision making other than just not knowing the risk level of that kind of flying, at least as contributing factors. Also if he was not night current, that might explain his decision to turn out over the water as the sun is setting and try to get down more quickly.
 
Last edited:
Whom amongst us, with more than a couple hundred hours total time, can say they have never found themselves in a situation largely, if not entirely of their own making, from which they avoided a potentially untimely outcome by a much narrower than preferred margin?

Sometimes I am left with the feeling the difference between being featured in "I Learned About Flying From That" versus "Aftermath" is thinner than the 4 pages that typically separate those columns in the magazine.
 
I know exactly what killed JFK Jr. because Mr. Death used the same trick in his never-ending hunt for the Steingar. Lost situational awareness on a VFR day in mist over water. I bet can money he was distracted by pain in his foot, muddled by whatever he was taking to relieve pain in his foot, and no doubt distracted by the very high maintenance ladies he had in his entourage. He wasn’t stupid, you don’t know what you don’t know. He was a low time pilot in tricky conditions he thought were night VFR (and technically was).

Personally, I think those who disparage the dead are simply too cowardly to disparage the living, since the living can push back.
 
steingar said:
I know exactly what killed JFK Jr. because Mr. Death used the same trick in his never-ending hunt for the Steingar. Lost situational awareness on a VFR day in mist over water. I bet can money he was distracted by pain in his foot, muddled by whatever he was taking to relieve pain in his foot, and no doubt distracted by the very high maintenance ladies he had in his entourage. He wasn’t stupid, you don’t know what you don’t know. He was a low time pilot in tricky conditions he thought were night VFR (and technically was).

Personally, I think those who disparage the dead are simply too cowardly to disparage the living, since the living can push back.
Click to expand...

His CFI called him before he departed and said he wanted to come along and didn’t mind hanging out for a few days.

JFK told him no, he wanted to do it on his own.

That right there is the first chain that could have easily been broken if JFK did not have a macho attitude.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
The most stupid thing about JFK Jr's accident was that his autopilot was perfectly capable of flying a coupled ILS approach to minimums, at which point he would have seen the runway lights. Know your equipment and don't be afraid to use it.

I learned to fly at New Bedford. You should learn quick flying in those parts not to screw around with thick haze even during the day, let alone at night.
 
kgruber said:
I've wanted to be in the back seat and whisper "John.....Push that button...A/P "ON.""
Click to expand...

I always suspected the accident occurred after he pushed the autopilot off button and once the aircraft was out of control he tried to engage the autopilot.
 
murphey said:
So why is this relevant to anything aviation or ....? The man's been gone for how many years? Definitely a morbid article for the sole purpose of selling magazines using the very old and now irrelevant "aura" of the Kennedy's.
Click to expand...

Agree about the likely motivations of the editors. I don’t think they understood the possible other way the man was “sloppy”.

Also, I don’t know that the writers thought their article was morbid at all.
 
Last edited:
Clip4 said:
I always suspected the accident occurred after he pushed the autopilot off button and once the aircraft was out of control he tried to engage the autopilot.
Click to expand...


The description in the video seemed to me like an increasingly large set of overcorrections and a stall-spin.
 
Jamie Kirk said:
His CFI called him before he departed and said he wanted to come along and didn’t mind hanging out for a few days.

JFK told him no, he wanted to do it on his own.

That right there is the first chain that could have easily been broken if JFK did not have a macho attitude.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Crazy thing that I'll never forget about that day is, I was up that afternoon with my CFI, a few miles away at TEB. We were getting me ready for my upcoming checkride in a few months and I can remember saying to him something like... "wow it's really hazy today, I wouldn't feel comfortable in these conditions without you with me".
After hearing of the JFK jr accident, I had a lot on my mind leading up to my checkride! It definitely gave me a reality check about get-there-itis and recognizing when you're in over your head and being too proud to turn back, or except 'no' for an answer.

Aviation has been my passion for as long as I can remember, as a toddler, seeing airplanes flying over my house towards EWR and TEB. As much as I love flying, my second greatest nightmare is dying in a crash. My first, is taking loved ones with me due to poor ADM.
 
Last edited:
PeterNSteinmetz said:
Agree about the likely motivations of the editors. I don’t think they understood the possible other way the man was “sloppy”.
Click to expand...

I don’t know which is more absurd, Isabel Jones writing a fashion article about a guy who has been dead 20 years or Peter Steinmetz writing poor fashion equals poor pilot skills 20 years after the guy is dead.
 
Last edited:
Jamie Kirk said:
His CFI called him before he departed and said he wanted to come along and didn’t mind hanging out for a few days.

JFK told him no, he wanted to do it on his own.

That right there is the first chain that could have easily been broken if JFK did not have a macho attitude.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Does one need to be macho to make a bad decision?
 
Clip4 said:
I don’t know which is more absurd, Isabel Jones writing a fashion article about a guy who has been dead 20 years or Peter Steinmetz writing poor fashion equals poor pilot skills 20 years after the guy is dead.
Click to expand...

I guess my use of ironic has been confusing to people :-(

I do agree that would be an odd equation.

What I found somewhat ironic is that the writer in the fashion magazine would not understand there could be a second, more morbid, meaning of their title. It struck me immediately as a pilot just passing over the title and I thought others here might also appreciate it.

I guess I can see how people might read my comment as implying there was an irony in someone who was a sloppy dresser ending up in an airplane crash due to poor decision making or risk management. If there was an association between these two, which I am not convinced there was, I am not sure I would find it sufficiently unexpected to think it was ironic.

To help avoid future confusion, here is one definition of ironic:

i·ron·ic, adjective, happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.
 
Last edited:
So this got me to wondering if there was a connection between his sartorial sense and the cause of the crash.

I am undecided on the validity of that, but it appears there was a perception at the time that he was sort of an irresponsible glamorous guy and that was connected with poor decision making. See for example http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/013726.html which reviews some of the contemporaneous emails.

I vaguely remember at the time of the crash a lot of the popular media coming down on JFK, Jr for that reason.
 
Clip4 said:
Does one need to be macho to make a bad decision?
Click to expand...

No, but I tend to agree with Jamie Kirk that given the statement about wanting to do it alone could indicate a macho attitude. Or at least an overconfident and careless one.

This was also the take in the MZeroA video.
 
steingar said:
...Personally, I think those who disparage the dead are simply too cowardly to disparage the living, since the living can push back.
Click to expand...
Seems to me that there is plenty of disparagement of the living here on PoA!
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
The description in the video seemed to me like an increasingly large set of overcorrections and a stall-spin.
Click to expand...
I've been thinking graveyard spiral, i.e., trying to raise the nose before leveling the wings.
 
I liked JFKJ as he was a great ambassador for GA. I've been guilty of far worse things as a low-time PP and survived to tell about it (like everyone here) so no judgement on my part. A very unfortunate loss for flyers and non-flyers alike.
 
Clip4 said:
I don’t know which is more absurd, Isabel Jones writing a fashion article about a guy who has been dead 20 years or Peter Steinmetz writing poor fashion equals poor pilot skills 20 years after the guy is dead.
Click to expand...
I don't think that's what he meant.
 
JFK Jr. fell into a common trap. I use his accident as a quintessential example of that trap but he didn't do anything particularly egregious. (That's not an excuse for his actions and their result, but rather an explanation.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top