Pilot's perspective on 'Love Story' JFK Jr crash
Looking at what the show got right
Love Story, an FX limited romance series, sparked renewed interest in the 1999 Martha’s Vineyard accident that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law, and how the accident actually happened.
A romance show did not, of course, make aviation-level factual accuracy its primary focus in the finale, which depicts the accident flight in detail. However, it’s worth looking into what the show got right, and what it didn’t, but also why it’s important that pilots continue to examine and learn from a stubbornly common accident scenario.
The sequence in the show begins with the passengers arriving at the airport in broad daylight and boarding a Piper Saratoga with the correct tail number, N9253N. However, Kennedy’s passengers actually arrived close to dusk, as they were running late. Kennedy informed an FBO employee he planned to arrive at the airport at 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. local time, and Kennedy initially planned to depart around 6:30 p.m., which would have kept most of the summertime flight in daylight conditions. His passengers didn’t arrive until after 8 p.m., and the airplane departed Essex County Airport at 8:39 p.m., two hours past the initially planned departure time.
To the show’s credit, Kennedy is shown checking the oil during a preflight as he likely would have, and the departure is depicted at dusk. During the flight, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Kennedy’s wife, is shown moving from the back seat to the cockpit, up until the accident. The NTSB concluded, however, that both passengers were in the back seats at the time of impact. Had one of the two sat in the front, they might have been able to provide some support, even if they were not trained pilots.
The way the show depicts the aircraft entering instrument conditions from the perspective of pilot and passengers is surprisingly well done.
There are some moments at the beginning of the accident sequence that might make a pilot cringe. At the onset of spatial disorientation, the show depicts Kennedy fixating on navigation rather than basic attitude instrument flying. Although it is possible that Kennedy fixated on the horizontal situation indicator instead of maintaining a constant scan, it seems more likely that Kennedy was confused by what he was feeling, and unable to sort out soon enough why his attitude indicator, altimeter, or turn coordinator did not correspond with what he was physically feeling.
One of the less commendable moments shows Kennedy use the adjustment knob on an attitude indicator to change the display by around 20 degrees nose down, a crazy large correction of such an instrument in flight, let alone in IMC. To make matters worse, the instrument is shown upside down, brown side up (likely because the sequence was shot with the gyro off, which is also why we see warning lights illuminated on the dashboard, among them “oil” and “gyro air”).
The red light that engulfs the cabin is not explainable by any system in the aircraft, especially as a pan to the turn coordinator shows wings level. There is also an audible master caution alarm, similar to that of a jet. The turn coordinator ball even has a flashing LED light on it, which is equally inexplicable.
In the actual series of events, there were no mechanical faults discovered by the NTSB that would have triggered warnings. The NTSB concluded the cause of the accident to be spatial disorientation. The discrepancy between what the pilot is feeling and seeing slowly creeps in, and, if the pilot does not rely solely on the flight instruments, will, over time, cause the pilot to lose control of the airplane. There are no alarms, no flashing warnings that alert the pilot to the onset of spatial disorientation, which is part of why it is so dangerous.
The final sequence of events is more congruent to that. Kennedy is seen confused, fixating on an (suddenly upright and correct) attitude indicator that is showing a steepening right bank. He looks outside for visual references, and doesn’t see any. Looking back inside, the turn coordinator agrees with the attitude indicator: steepening the right bank. (Again, a master alarm sounds and there is still a flashing light in the turn coordinator ball.)
The show cuts to black and then moves on to the search and recovery efforts. But what caused such a disastrous outcome to the flight?
Kennedy, a private pilot fairly new to the Saratoga, likely under pressure to make it to the wedding, departed in marginal visual flight conditions reported at his destination, and a planned route over water, at night.
Descending into Martha’s Vineyard, the limited visibility (5 to 6 miles) at night over water meant that he effectively lost all references to the horizon, even though conditions were within VFR limits. Kennedy had begun to train for an instrument rating, though had not completed it. Pilots without instrument ratings and one-third of pilots with instrument ratings can lose control of the aircraft about three minutes after an unexpected entry into instrument conditions.
Overall, despite some dramatization, the show does a good job depicting why VFR into IMC is so dangerous. The confusion caused by various sensory illusions that follow an unexpected entry into instrument conditions takes significant training and proficiency to overcome. Year after year, continued visual flight into instrument conditions remains a leading cause of weather-related accidents. In 2023, it caused 10 accidents, all of which were fatal, according to the thirty-fifth Richard G. McSpadden Report.
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