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The Kennedy family—about as close to royalty as you can get in the United States—suffered so many tragedies that some have come to wonder whether the family is cursed. In 1999, the late President Kennedy and Jackie’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., was killed in a plane crash along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren. However, JFK Jr.’s last words made no indication of impending disaster.
On the day all three perished, July 16, 1999, John was flying them from Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. They planned to attend the wedding of his cousin, Rory Kennedy. By the time the plane took off at 8:38 p.m., the sun was setting, and hazy conditions had worsened.
As John began his descent into Martha’s Vineyard, their flight path became irregular. “His flight path into the water is consistent with what is known as a graveyard spiral,” Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB investigator told People in July 2024. “The airplane makes a spiral nose down … kind of like going down a drain. The plane went into one final turn and it stayed in that turn pretty much all the way down to the ocean.” In transcripts released in 2017, JFK Jr.’s final words were revealed and they’re chillingly routine.
JFK Jr.’s last words revealed
The last radio contact with air traffic controllers from John before he died was pretty standard, giving no additional clues as to what happened before the plane went down. “Caldwell ground, Saratoga niner two five three November, ready to taxi with mike at airbound right turnout northeast bound,” he told ground controllers at the Essex County Airport, per Reuters.
John was directed to a runway and then replied, “Five three November to two two, thanks,” represented part of the tail number that identified his Piper plane. That’s the last anyone ever heard from him.
When the plane didn’t arrive at Martha’s Vineyard that night, it was reported missing. The wreckage was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean on July 19, 1999. Based on the time they took off and the time they were reported missing, they had been flying for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes before the crash occurred.
John didn’t register his flight plan, which made the search all the more complicated. “I guess the guy’s a pretty new pilot,” one Boston air traffic controller said to the supervisor at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Automated Flight Service Station in Connecticut. “So if he didn’t file a flight plan, we’re pretty much out of luck then, huh?”
In a call placed to the Boston Air Traffic Control supervisor, John’s relative Carole Radziwill, said she was “looking for a friend of mine” who was supposed to be in Hyannis by then. “He’s relatively new, you know. He only got his license a year ago. Maybe I’m just, like, paranoid, but I’m just getting nervous,” she said, per Aviation Pros. The trio’s bodies were discovered three days later.
For more about JFK Jr. and his legacy…
JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography
dives deep into his complicated psyche and explores the what-ifs, illuminating both the cultural and political moment he inhabited and the way this son of a president, so full of promise and possibility, embodied America’s most cherished hopes.
