What happened when JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette died? Timeline of the day of plane crash
What happened when JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette died? Timeline of the day of plane crash
Erin Jensen, USA TODAYThu, March 26, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC
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After two months of intense cultural discourse, FX’s "Love Story” concludes March 26 with the plane crash that took the lives of titular subjects John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, as well as her older sister, Lauren Bessette.
On July 16, 1999, Kennedy sat in the pilot’s seat of his single-engine plane, intending to drop off sister-in-law Lauren in Martha's Vineyard before continuing to Hyannis Port with his wife for cousin Rory Kennedy's wedding.
The night before, Kennedy watched the Atlanta Braves beat the hometown Yankees in the Bronx before checking into The Stanhope Hotel on the Upper East Side, a few blocks from the 5,300-square-foot apartment where he grew up with his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and sister, Caroline.
1 / 0See John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's whirlwind romance
John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette became tabloid fodder when the publisher son of President John F. Kennedy, described as the "closest thing to American royalty," and the Calvin Klein publicist, "a star in her own right," met in 1992 while at his fitting for the clothing brand. In recent years, Bessette's fashion has found a new following – particularly on TikTok – as a new generation fawns over her simple but chic wardrobe. After they were married, Bessette was known as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. The end of the Kennedys' love story shocked the world when they died in a plane crash alongside Bessette-Kennedy's sister, Lauren Bessette. The former first son was piloting the aircraft when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard in 1999. Now, director Ryan Murphy is releasing the first installment of his "Love Story" anthology based on the whirlwind romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. See their relationship in photos, beginning here at the U.S. Customs House in New York City on May 19, 1999, for the Newman's Own/George Awards.
Kennedy eschewed the Tribeca loft he shared with Bessette for the hotel after "a heated fight" with Bessette, Elizabeth Beller writes in “Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy,” on which the FX series is based.
Kennedy wanted his wife to accompany him to the wedding, but Bessette "needed a break; she felt she’d done her share of Kennedy events for the time being," Beller writes. "Carolyn and John's fight turned into an enormous blowup, with John losing ever more patience, and Carolyn feeling ever more like an afterthought." (The penultimate episode of "Love Story," which aired March 19, dramatized this argument inside their loft.)
Though Bessette eventually agreed to attend, she and John would never make it to the nuptials, which would be rescheduled for Aug. 2, 1999 in Greece in the aftermath of the tragedy.
John, 38, Carolyn, 33, and Lauren, 34, were killed when the plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. Here's a timeline of the trio’s final hours and the rescue efforts that turned into a recovery mission (all times local).
An unmarked police car sits outside of a hanger at Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, on July 17, 1999. John F. Kennedy Jr. departed the day prior with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her older sister, Lauren Bessette.Friday, July 16, 1999
10 a.m.: According to the book “JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography,” Kennedy went to the “George” magazine offices in Midtown and had a meeting with friend Peter Kiernan.
“On the afternoon of his death, we talked about his life and his frustrations and his aspirations and his family, in ways that we never had before,” Kiernan said. “He talked about his sister, Caroline, about how important she was to him. … He said something like, ‘It’s the two of us left and she’s a part of me, I’m a part of her.’”
About 4 p.m.: Kennedy’s executive assistant, RoseMarie Terenzio, coauthor of “JFK Jr.,” says that at about 4, John told he was “going to the gym for an hour.” Terenzio reminded the “George” cofounder that he needed to meet his sister-in-law Lauren in the building’s lobby at 6.
Terenzio says in the oral history that earlier in the day, Kennedy spoke with flight instructor Bob Merena and told the teacher he didn’t need to accompany him on the flight. “It wasn’t unusual for him to say he was going to fly alone,” Terenzio says. “He had made that flight before alone.”
William Cohan, John’s classmate at Andover boarding school and author of “Four Friends,” says in “JFK Jr.” that he had heard an instructor offered to join Kennedy for the flight on his new plane, which he had bought in April 1999.
“The plane was several magnitudes more powerful than he really was comfortable in,” Cohan says. “So the instructor offered to go with him, but John said: ‘No, you don’t have to. It’s gonna be late.’ The flight instructor had a wife and family. ‘Go home to your wife and kids.’ I mean, this is the way John was. 'I can handle this. I’m gonna be a good guy. We’ll be fine.' So that’s what I was told happened.”
John Kennedy Jr. with wife Carolyn Besset arrive at "Bright Night Whitney", a retrospective celebration of a century of American art at the Whitney Museum in New York City March 9, 1999.
5 p.m.: According to Beller’s “Once Upon a Time,” an eyewitness saw Bessette leaving a nail salon by 5 p.m. (The premiere episode of "Love Story" depicted this appointment and her exit from the salon.)
“She went to Saks to buy a dress for the wedding the same day she was leaving, because she hadn’t planned on going,” Beller writes. “The salesgirl remembers Carolyn saying, ‘He just had the cast taken off his leg. I don’t know if he’s ready yet to fly again.’ After the purchase, the salesgirl wished Carolyn good luck. ‘Thanks,’ Carolyn replied. ‘I’m going to need it.’”
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6:30 p.m.: Beller writes that Bessette, in her own car, and Kennedy with Lauren, were headed for the Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey, about 25 miles outside the city.
“They all thought that they would’ve arrived by 7:15 and taken off at 7:30, plenty of time to land before it got dark at 8:40,” Beller states. “They were stuck in traffic and didn’t make it to the airport until after 8:00 p.m.”
7:53 p.m.: According to Beller’s book, Kyle Bailey, a fellow pilot at the airport, “said that John then called a pilot information number for a weather briefing, which at 7:53 p.m. reported eight miles of visibility and clear skies. John’s license allowed him to fly at night as long as there were at least five miles of visibility.”
8:38 p.m.: Kennedy’s six-seat Piper Saratoga departs, according to Beller: “Sunset on July 16, 1999, was 8:26 p.m. Dusk was at 8:58. Carolyn, John, and Lauren had twenty minutes of crepuscular blue and then darkness.”
About 9:41 p.m.: The National Transportation Safety Board report states that “about 2141” the aircraft “was destroyed when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean approximately 7½ miles southwest of Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.”
1 / 0'Love Story' cast photos compared to real-life people including JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette
FX's "Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette" (Thursdays, 9 ET/PT on FX and streaming on Hulu) depicts the romance of the pair, who tragically died in a plane crash in 1999. Let's take a closer look at the actors and the real-life people they're portraying.
Jeff Guzzetti, formerly an NTSB investigator, says in “JFK Jr.” that if he were asked about the crash, he’d surmise that Kennedy “followed the Connecticut and Rhode Island coastline and then he turned out to sea to head towards Martha’s Vineyard. And since it was dark and it was over the ocean, he probably had no horizon.”
The haze would have required JFK Jr. to rely on the plane’s instruments instead of his own visibility, Guzzetti says. “However, he was not trained for instrument flying.”
“The last thirty miles, he starts to wander as he begins his descent to Martha’s Vineyard,” Guzzetti speculates. “His flight path into the water is indicative of something called spatial disorientation. His inner ears were playing tricks with his sense of orientation… His flight path into the water is consistent with what is known as a graveyard spiral. The airplane makes a spiral nose-down, down, down to the grave, 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. It plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in a steep nose-down inverted attitude.”
Midnight: Carole Radziwill, who was married to Kennedy’s cousin Anthony Radziwill until his death in August 1999, writes in her memoir, “What Remains,” that Kennedy’s friend Dan Samson phoned her at 12 a.m. Samson, who was supposed to retrieve the couple from the Hyannis Port airport at 10 p.m., informs Radziwill they hadn’t arrived. The future star of "The Real Housewives of New York City" makes a series of calls, putting on her journalist's hat to try to locate Kennedy and Bessette.
Search and rescue efforts kick off the next morning, Beller writes, “with fifteen Civil Air Patrol planes, two Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk choppers, an Air National Guard helicopter, and a Hercules cargo plane above the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. An armada of boats, including Coast Guard cutters and search-and-rescue patrol boats, were on the water.”
A map depicts the area covered by search and rescue efforts near Martha's Vineyard, shown on July, 21 1999.Tuesday, July 20, 1999
About 10:40 p.m.: After days of searching, the NTSB report states that “the airplane's wreckage was located (by U.S. Navy divers) in 120 feet of water, about 1/4 mile north of the target's last recorded radar position.”
Wednesday, July 21, 1999
About 2:30 a.m.: The New York Times reports later that “Mr. Kennedy's remains were located about 2:30 A.M. by an underwater camera checking objects detected by sonar. Several hours later, Navy divers” discovered the Bessette sisters.
Richard M. Larrabee, rear admiral in the Coast Guard, said the three were found “‘near and under’ the fuselage,” the outlet reported, still wearing their seat belts.
A drawing of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket in 1963 is displayed on the exterior of the New York City apartment he shared with Carolyn Bessette on July 18, 1999.
4:30 p.m.: The Los Angeles Times reports that “Navy divers brought the bodies to the surface at 4:30 p.m. EDT.”
According to the NTSB report, autopsies on the three that evening “indicated that the pilot and passengers died from multiple injuries as a result of an airplane accident … The toxicological tests were negative for alcohol and drugs of abuse.”Beller writes that to keep their final resting places from becoming a tourist attraction, the ashes of the three are scattered at sea the next day.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What happened to JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette? A timeline of the crash
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