On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren lost their lives after their plane crashed into the Ocean.
The group was traveling to a family wedding. John’s cousin, Rory, was getting married at the family home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Lauren Bessette was also on the flight so John could take her to Martha’s Vineyard to spend the weekend with her friends.
Because of New York’s traffic, they arrived late to the airport in Essex County, New Jersey, and by the time their plane took off, the sun had already set.
John was piloting the plane himself, while still relatively inexperienced, having about 300 hours of flying time. John didn’t have an instrument rating (IFR) license, meaning he was not legally permitted to fly an aircraft using only instruments, so he still had to rely on looking outside to see where he was going.
As the plane flew in the dark over the open ocean toward Martha’s Vineyard, a thick haze rolled in. Without lights from the shore or a clear horizon to look at, John became spatially disoriented, meaning he had the wrong sense of which way the plane was pointing.
The plane suddenly went from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in just 14 seconds, which is a rate far beyond the aircraft’s safe maximum, before disappearing from the radar screen at 9:40 PM. The plane crashed into the water about eight miles from Martha’s Vineyard, killing all three people on impact.
When the plane didn’t arrive, a massive search was set to look for them. On July 20, Navy divers located the plane at a depth of 116 feet, with the three still strapped into their seats. The family held a funeral at sea on a Navy ship two days after, and the ashes of John, Carolyn, and Lauren were scattered into the ocean.
Later, Ann Freeman, mother of Carolyn and Lauren Bessette, sued them “for the wrongful death and conscious pain and suffering” of her daughters. They settled in July 2001 for a reported $15 million.
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