On July 6, almost one year after the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its report on the tragedy surrounding Piper N9253N. Since that fateful night of July 16, 1999, there probably isn't a pilot in our membership who has not been asked by nonflying friends, "What happened?" The worldwide media attention focused on the pilot—John F. Kennedy Jr.—and his wife and her sister, who were with him in the airplane.
The week following the accident AOPA staff spent countless hours trying to answer questions and correct the many media inaccuracies about being a private pilot and night flying. Throughout this dialogue, however, we had to be very careful not to prejudge what might have happened, and leave that to the official body tasked with a thorough investigation into aircraft mishaps—the NTSB.
AOPA had faced tragedies such as this in the 1990s. The young girl who crashed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while attempting to set a world record with her flight instructor attracted heavy media attention, and Congress wanted to take action about children in the cockpits of light airplanes. Subsequently, John Denver's untimely death in an experimental aircraft raised questions about pilot medical certification. The circumstances that surrounded the Kennedy accident brought immediate cries to change regulations about night flying. Making matters worse, several nations that do not allow night VFR operations were cited as examples.
AOPA was informed that the FAA had developed three scenarios that were waiting, should the NTSB indicate in its final report that changes in night flying regulations were needed: No night VFR; no night VFR without an instrument-rated pilot; and no night VFR with passengers unless the pilot was instrument-rated. At AOPA Expo '99 last October, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey indicated that the regulations would not be changed, "based on what we know today."
With the release of the Safety Board's report, it appears that sanity does prevail at times in Washington. To those of us who fly, the NTSB document is most notable because it contains no recommendations. It cites the "pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation." According to our own AOPA Air Safety Foundation's Nall Report, the number of spatial disorientation accidents has been cut by two-thirds since 1983. NTSB Chairman James Hall pledged to your association that we would be involved on an advisory basis in the recommendation phase of the report. Now we fully understand why the phone didn't ring, and AOPA applauds the Board's members and staff for seeing what so many of us felt immediately after learning of the accident.
The report ( www.ntsb.gov/aviation/nyc/99a178.htm) is quite detailed, and it leaves few questions unanswered. Hearsay during last year's media frenzy was our greatest enemy. The record can now be set straight on the training and flight experience that John Kennedy had accumulated. One criticism had been that he was a low-time pilot. Perhaps when compared to airline captains, yes. But the logbooks showed 310 hours, which is quite substantial for a new pilot. In addition, much of his private-pilot training was at one of the nation's best flight schools. The news media also failed to indicate that private pilots must receive instrument and night training in order to receive a certificate. Three hours of instrument training was added to the private pilot curriculum in 1997. Over the years, the night training requirements have been increased, and Kennedy was required to have three hours of night flight training, including a 100-nm cross-country and 10 takeoffs and landings. Later, Kennedy returned to the same prestigious flight school and completed 12 of 25 segments of its instrument course—so much for the inaccurate reporting that he lacked any skills to fly with reference to instruments.
Also, the report pointed out that Kennedy was not new to this route. He had flown the Caldwell, New Jersey-to-Martha's Vineyard trip on some 35 one-way legs, often at night, and on occasion with a CFI—when Kennedy performed an instrument approach in IMC.
There will be many aviation articles surrounding the details of the report, and how all of us as pilots can learn from this tragedy. I'll leave those lessons to experts like our own Bruce Landsberg, executive director of the AOPA Air Safety Foundation, who is working on a story for the next issue of Pilot. However, the one overriding message that stands out for me is the fact that Kennedy did not use so many of the services for which AOPA has fought over the years. The NTSB cites no contact with a flight service station specialist prior to departure to interpret the weather he obtained from a computerized source. While in flight there is no record of an update. Further, there was no apparent attempt on his part to obtain VFR traffic advisories from the many radar facilities that dot the route from northern New Jersey to the Vineyard—where all the Class B, C, and D airspace almost dictates their use.
Your association has lobbied for more and improved weather information and FAA services that provide direct benefits to improve general aviation safety. These services are all paid for through the excise tax on aviation fuel, not on a user-fee basis that might deter a radio call or telephone briefing. Kennedy was an AOPA member, and he supported our work to continue and improve these services for pilots.
Hopefully we all will learn lessons from this tragedy, and will appreciate, use, and understand the many services that AOPA has supported in order to improve GA safety.
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