24 Yrs After Plane Accident Killed Kennedy Jr, Crash Site Sees Another Piper Plane Plunge On Same Date

Co-passenger took the controls and crash-landed the small plane outside the Martha’s Vineyard airport runway after the 79-year-old pilot suffered a medical emergency.

John F Kennedy Jr, the son of late US President John F Kennedy, died in a plane crash in 1999, along with fashion publicist wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. The 38-year-old was flying a Piper Saratoga, and the three were on their way to a wedding when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The date was July 16, and the crash site was about 7.5 miles off Martha's Vineyard on the Massachusetts coast.

Exactly 24 years later, the area witnessed a similar incident as a small airplane crash-landed on a Massachusetts island near Martha's Vineyard Airport in West Tisbury, news agency Associated Press reported, quoting a police statement. The pilot in this case was a 79-year-old male, and he was with a woman passenger who took the controls after the former reportedly suffered a medical emergency as the plane made its final approach towards its destination, the AP report said. The pilot was sent to hospital in a “life-threatening condition”, while the woman passenger survived without a scratch, according to the police, who did not name either of them in the statement issued on July 16. 

Crash Under Probe

The statement issued by the Massachusetts State Police said the plane had “a hard landing outside the runway”, which resulted in the left wing of the aircraft breaking in half. While the pilot was flown to a Boston hospital, the woman passenger escaped without injuries and was discharged after an evaluation at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, the police said.

The pilot and the passenger are Connecticut residents who were flying a 2006 Piper Meridian from Westchester, New York. The aircraft was moved to a secure location at the Martha’s Vineyard airport after the crash, which is being investigated by the state police and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the police said in the statement. 

Quoting an FAA spokesperson, the AP report said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is in charge of the probe.

How John F Kennedy Jr Died In 1999

On July 16, 1999, Kennedy Jr did not make any distress call during the flight, but media reports from the time said he became disoriented while piloting the Piper Saratoga through thick fog over the coast. The plane lost altitude and ultimately plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in just around 30 seconds, according to a July 1999 Washington Post report. 

Quoting radar data, the report said the plane dropped from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in 14 seconds, which was “far beyond” the safe maximum descent rate for the aircraft. The last known capture of the plane’s radar was taken at 34 seconds past 9:40 pm, when it was flying at about 1,100 feet (less than twice the height of the Statue of Unity in Gujarat), and plunging at 53 miles an hour. It was a rapid drop and at that speed, it was reported, Kennedy could not have averted the crash. The Post report said autopsies on the bodies concluded that all three of them died upon impact. The bodies, strapped in their seatbelts, were found from the aircraft wreckage stuck at 116 feet under water on July 21. Kennedy’s body was still in the cockpit. 

A year later, the NTSB in a report called pilot error as the most likely cause of the crash.