Last man to kill JFK Jr. alive, remembers ‘deep concern’ before the crash

Bailey, who also planned to fly to the island that evening, said in his new book “Witness: JFK Jr.’s Fatal Flight” that the weather gave him food for thought.

“I’ve seen John do that trip many times,” Bailey said. “It was just a typical Friday night. I planned to take two flights, an earlier flight in the afternoon, which I did for about an hour, just to get up there. And then the night flight took longer. It was, as we say in aviation, the three H’s: hazy, hot and humid. Your typical July day and evening in New York City.”

Bailey, who was 25 at the time, was at Essex County Airport in Caldwell, New Jersey, when Kennedy arrived.

According to Bailey, nothing about the scene initially seemed unusual. JFK Jr. even passed him by while grabbing a quick snack.

But after Bailey completed a short afternoon flight, he said conditions began to deteriorate.

“From my experience, I felt that based on these conditions, there would likely be less visibility that night in Martha’s Vineyard,” Bailey explained. “However, it did not mean that I would cancel my trip at that time.”

But the more he watched the weather, the more uneasy he became.

“I decided to cancel the flight that evening,” he said. “I was angry, but it was the right decision for me.”

“I noticed that the temperature and the dew point, that spread, was getting closer and closer,” he explained. “What that means is that in weather conditions there is a very high chance of ground fog developing. In John’s case, he may not have been told that or he didn’t know. You really can’t blame him for that, for what he doesn’t know or what he wasn’t told.”

“I knew from experience that fog and poor visibility on those very hot, hazy, humid summer nights can be a problem, especially when flying over water,” Bailey said. “In John’s case, especially at night, he was planning to take off after me. It would have been more challenging for a VFR pilot with hazy, hot, humid conditions, a partial horizon and now total darkness on top of that.”

“For a VFR pilot, it’s like losing the horizon at night, like jumping off the edge of the earth into a complete sea of ​​darkness,” he added.

Despite his reservations, Bailey said he watched as Kennedy completed his pre-flight checks and took off around 8:38 p.m.

Later that evening the uneasy feeling lingered.

“I went home to my mother that night and said something like, ‘I just saw JFK Jr. at the airport. I hope he doesn’t kill himself on that plane one day,'” Bailey recalls.

“That Piper Saratoga was a new airplane for him. It was complex and powerful, unlike his older airplane, which he had just sold. I really hoped he had his instructor with him. I was just worried about him. Was it a premonition? Possibly. But it was more of a major concern for John and the two others,” he recalled.

“I wasn’t sure if he had an instructor on the plane,” he said. “After the tragedy, a lot of people came to me and said, ‘Why did you let him leave? Why didn’t you say anything?’ The answer is: I didn’t know who was on the plane with them.”

“I saw all three of them boarding the plane, but since I wasn’t on that plane the whole time, I wasn’t sure if there was an instructor walking towards it, so I didn’t say anything. I just hoped he had an instructor with him. The conditions weren’t terrible, but they weren’t great either,” he said.

The next morning, Bailey checked the weather again and wondered if he might fly that day. But news soon came that a Piper Saratoga had been reported missing.

“I immediately recognized the color of the Saratoga and the tail number,” he said. “I hoped and prayed that maybe he would return or be on the ground in Martha’s Vineyard.”

“I remember saying to my family, ‘If this plane isn’t found in two hours, it’s probably gone, along with the other two on the plane.’ I assumed the worst, but hoped for the best that there might even be a remote chance of someone being found alive. But in the back of my mind I knew this was pretty much not going to happen.”

Five days later, wreckage from the plane was discovered on the ocean floor, along with the bodies of JFK Jr., 38, Carolyn, 33, and Lauren Bessette, 34.

Investigators later concluded that the crash was likely caused by spatial disorientation after Kennedy lost control of the plane during a nighttime descent over water in hazy conditions.