New Documentary on JFK Jr. Accident

Palmpilot

Palmpilot

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I missed a new documentary on the JFK Jr. accident on the HLN network last night, but fortunately, it is being repeated this evening, and on Sunday, Monday, and the following Saturday. Check local listings for times. (It's part of the "What Really Happened" series.)
 
What really happened, a long term 5 minute study.

The wife found out husband was sleeping with the sister of the wife. The wife snuck a pistol on board and it was a murder, murder suicide.

Do not attempt to take this as the truth.
 
Perhaps he was getting a hum....oh never mind.

Ya know, maybe if he had a AOA... (sorry, Mulligan made me do it while he's out of the country).
 
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Even a chute wouldn't have saved him as it would have ripped off the air-frame when he deployed it at Vne in a death spiral.
 
During my PP training, this was a big topic of discussion on what not to do. Plenty of examples of both action and inaction.
 
Not the worst I've seen but it was still the usual documentary overdramatization with typical media inaccuracies. My two favorites were the nonstandard panel with the spinning instruments and the "domino theory" which seemed to suggest a single bad thing would necessarily start an unbreakable chain reaction.

Nothing really new.
 
Having watched today's rebroadcast, I think there was nothing really new about the accident, but overall I thought it was a good summary, and I especially enjoyed the biographical details about his life and relationships.
 
I heard it was Geraldo Rivera and Pierre Salinger - they took him out with a missile that they found in Al Capone's secret vault........
 
What did John Jr. miss most about Martha's Vineyard? The airport.
 
Are we at the 10th anniversary or something? They usually dredge these things up every 10, 20, 30 years and having nothing new to say, dream up stuff to draw a crowd.
Have seen this innumerable times ie like the Kennedy assassination.
 
Non IR pilot flying into MVFR at night over open water leading to SD. Haven't seen it but not sure how you turn that into a 2 hour show.
 
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Stingray Don said:
Non IR pilot flying into MVFR at night over open water leading to SD. haven't seen it but not sure how you turn that into a 2 hour show.
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Easy. For the same reason the search and rescue/search and recovery were far more extensive for this very famous person than it would be for you and me.
 
Stingray Don said:
Non IR pilot flying into MVFR at night over open water leading to SD. Haven't seen it but not sure how you turn that into a 2 hour show.
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At least half of the show was biography, reactions of friends, etc.
 
I had a very spirited debate with a conspiracy theorist on Facebook about this incident. Despite explaining the NTSB report to him in detail, including reports by other pilots in the area that it was MVFR at best, he was convinced that Hillary had him killed due to him being political competition. His "evidence" was that JFK Jr was a "highly experienced" pilot and would never have crashed without outside intervention. Some people...

Without getting overly political, I can't stand HRC, but really...

People like him are a gold mine for shows like this.
 
Was it better or worse than the Air Crash Investigation episode about this accident?
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't recall seeing any significant time, if any, spent on conspiracy theories in this show.
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Sorry I was a little vague. What I meant was, shows that re-examine the same incident over and over, promising "newly discovered" info.
 
As I recall, he had done this flight to that destination or back what 10 times or more? Is that correct?
 
midlifeflyer said:
Not the worst I've seen but it was still the usual documentary overdramatization with typical media inaccuracies. My two favorites were the nonstandard panel with the spinning instruments and the "domino theory" which seemed to suggest a single bad thing would necessarily start an unbreakable chain reaction.

Nothing really new.
Click to expand...

Never heard of the domino theory. Sounds like a layman's misinterpretation of the "accident chain" concept.

I know you know this, but for the sake of the discussion: The accident chain concept says that breaking one link will avoid the accident--that's not the same thing as saying that not breaking that link will cause the accident to be inevitable.
 
Omalley1537 said:
Sorry I was a little vague. What I meant was, shows that re-examine the same incident over and over, promising "newly discovered" info.
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Can someone say, "Amelia Earhart"? :rolleyes: ;)

Imagine if they had not found the airplane...

He was a celebrity who came to an untimely end.
 
Omalley1537 said:
I had a very spirited debate with a conspiracy theorist on Facebook about this incident. Despite explaining the NTSB report to him in detail, including reports by other pilots in the area that it was MVFR at best, he was convinced that Hillary had him killed due to him being political competition. His "evidence" was that JFK Jr was a "highly experienced" pilot and would never have crashed without outside intervention. Some people...

Without getting overly political, I can't stand HRC, but really...

People like him are a gold mine for shows like this.
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People like him are a goldmine for getting elected
 
dmspilot said:
Never heard of the domino theory. Sounds like a layman's misinterpretation of the "accident chain" concept.

I know you know this, but for the sake of the discussion: The accident chain concept says that breaking one link will avoid the accident--that's not the same thing as saying that not breaking that link will cause the accident to be inevitable.
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Exactly. That's the problem I had with the domino analogy. In dominoes, you knock the first one over and they all fall over. Having made the first mistake, the pilot is treated pretty much as a passive entity with no real choice in what happens.

In the accident chain concept, we are building the chain. Bad decisions get added to bad decisions. The pilot is an active participant with three choices. Make it better, make it worse, or act like a domino.

Funny. My wife is a non-pilot who has been through an in-flight emergency with me. When she heard the domino theory on the show, she was the first to say, "That's wrong."
 
This from Wikipedia JFK plane crash:
"Fifteen months before the crash, Kennedy had flown about 35 flights either to or from northern New Jersey and the Martha's Vineyard area. Kennedy flew more than 17 of these legs without a CFI on board, including at least five at night."
 
Zeldman said:
What really happened, a long term 5 minute study.

The wife found out husband was sleeping with the sister of the wife. The wife snuck a pistol on board and it was a murder, murder suicide.

Do not attempt to take this as the truth.
Click to expand...

Careful, someone we know might tweet this as fact
 
Some time ago I rented a 172 at the Mount Pleasant Airport near Charleston SC to get checked out. We went out to the practice area for stalls, slow flight, etc and then went out over the beach and then flew a few miles out over the Atlantic ocean. The ocean, horizon, and sky blended in to a nice blue haze. Keep in mind this was at 10 am in VFR conditions. I would not be comfortable flying an extend distance in those conditions much less at late evening without an IFR rating. Well above my comfort level. I seem to remember a couple of years ago off the coast of Florida a plane was on final in VFR conditions and the pilot crashed in the Gulf. It is difficult to comprehend how you can have issues unless you have experienced ocean flying and seen the way the horizon just blends in with the water. Also, the CFI that gave me my recent bi-annual takes all of his students for a ride out into the Atlantic. Probably good experience for pilots near the coast.
 
And the JFK Jr. accident happened at night.

I was on a night VFR flight once and got vectored out of over the Chesapeake Bay. It was widely reported as 10 miles visibility but there was a distinctive haze in the air, and an overcast several thousand feet above, so there was no moonlight or starlight. I looked out the side window toward the bay and it was nothing but black. The window might as well have been painted over with black spraypaint.
 
I have a theory, although keep in mind I haven't seen this latest documentary. I think it's 'technology driven', in that any time a new technology comes out, usually computer graphics oriented, they redo an old event. kind of like Titanic.......every dozen years or so they have new ways to animate stuff, so they redo the entire documentary based around the new technology. nothing really new as far as what actually happened, its just a way to showcase the new tech. just a theory. was there animation in this one?
 
Over confident,get home itis. Should have engaged auto pilot and heade to Hyannis.
 
eman1200 said:
I have a theory, although keep in mind I haven't seen this latest documentary. I think it's 'technology driven', in that any time a new technology comes out, usually computer graphics oriented, they redo an old event. kind of like Titanic.......every dozen years or so they have new ways to animate stuff, so they redo the entire documentary based around the new technology. nothing really new as far as what actually happened, its just a way to showcase the new tech. just a theory. was there animation in this one?
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Little, if any. A lot of it was interviews.
 
Had a discussion about this last night while at dinner with some friends... Funny when they find you fly airplane they think you're an expert on all things aviation... now what ever gave them that idea:D

Anyway as I explained to them the short answer is he screwed up... and articulated my theory from what I read; that is he was in a hurry to get to where he was going, low time in type, and VFR into IFR conditions... a disaster in the making

But I hope from this sad event that we're able to enjoy some more older pilots and not have too many more bold pilots..

Happy flying
 
I'm not saying it was Hillary-
aa9b3be7f88357992bb90d0848f2371f9045200d.jpg

But it was Hillary...
 
My father-in-law is an airline captain and was flying that night over water in that general area. He said he remembers there being a haze that was causing a false horizon and he was thinking at the time that this is one of those nights where a VFR pilot might get disoriented.
 
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