JD Wetterling

He was handsome, seemed pleasantly modest on TV and was considered a nice guy by mutual friends, yet young John Kennedy's ego led to the needless death of him and his family. Arrogance plus airplane minus caution equals foregone conclusion. In spite of advances in safety and avionics, the machine is still mercilessly unforgiving of foolhardy pilots who venture outside the envelope of their own limitations. Shakespeare's dictum, to know thyself, is still literally a matter of life and death in an airplane.

I think I am qualified to speak on this issue. I was a single seat jet fighter pilot in the USAF and I flew in combat on some of the inkiest nights in Southeast Asia, not knowing up from down aside from the visual information provided by some dimly glowing instruments. I have hyperventilated with fear and vertigo and multicolored tracers in my face. And I suspect that some of my friends died for the same reason John did. By the grace of God I did not. But a flight to Martha's Vineyard is not combat and the mission was unessential and for a rookie pilot the decision should have been a no-brainer.

In my civilian life as a private aviator I have lost count of the wealthy people I've known who bought expensive airplanes because they could and flew off into weather conditions beyond their capabilities, only to crash and die. The same personality that makes a successful businessman can lead to death in an airplane. Or, perhaps more relevant to the current case, people who are treated like gods start believing they are, throwing the caution of mere mortals to the winds. As we used to say in my fighter squadron, an elite culture not ordinarily given to humility, "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old, bold pilots."

It is far from uncommon, when flying in conditions with no external visual references to three dimensions, as on a dark hazy night, to have the eyes reading the instruments, telling you that the plane is right side up and every other sense telling you the opposite. It's called vertigo. I have flown final approach to land in a fighter in nasty weather conditions feeling like I was hanging upside down in the harness. Only clenched teeth and a cast-iron self-discipline, born of intense training, assured a landing with the wheels on the bottom side.

Even civilian student pilots are taught how to recover the airplane from "unusual attitudes" strictly by use of the airplane instruments. It's training for just such an occurrence as John probably experienced. As such it's a critical item on the final check ride for a private pilot license, but there you know it's coming, the senses are prepared to be fooled and you have the instructor to save you from yourself. Flying in the real, dark night world it sneaks up on you. You can tumble the gyros in your inner ear by simply turning your head abruptly to talk to someone else in the cockpit, or by looking down in your lap to read a map. With no backup beyond your own capabilities, the stress factor can overpower the mind. I knew a prosperous doctor who experienced what John probably did, but he survived a wiser, humbled, truly blessed man. I watched as he parked the plane, walked into the airport operations office, threw the keys on the counter and said with a quavering voice, "Sell it." I suspect that if John had survived he would have done something similar. The terror of the last several seconds of life for the three souls in that cockpit had to be too horrible to contemplate.

My heart bleeds for the families. Untimely death is always the most tragic of catastrophes. Untimely, senseless death, self-inflicted by a foolish decision, is an enormous lifetime burden for friends and family who survive. To take innocent loved ones with you borders on unforgivable.

A nice guy made a ghastly mistake in judgment and paid for it with his life and the lives of his family. Now John's beatification by a celebrity-crazed press is winding down, but the legal battles have most likely only begun. Look for lawsuits against the instructor, the airplane manufacturer and maybe even between in-laws. That's the American way of dealing with blame in this Golden Age of Exoneration. And win, lose or draw, one man's failure becomes another man's fortune. May God have mercy on us all.