FX’s ‘Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette‘ follows the star-crossed romance of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, focusing on the different worlds they came from and how their lives changed, especially with the media’s constant eye on them. Before beginning the saga of their tumultuous relationship, the show reveals how their story ended. The scene opens with both of them preparing to attend a family wedding and then heading to the hangar where John’s private plane is waiting for them. They will not be flown by a professional pilot, but rather, John will fly them, and Carolyn’s sister, Lauren. At one point, Carolyn asks where John’s instructor is, and he says that the guy “couldn’t make it.” This turns out to be a bad sign, as later it is revealed that the plane crashed, killing all three passengers. This raises an important question: why couldn’t the instructor make it?
The Instructor’s Absence Has a Different Reason in Real Life
While ‘Love Story’ is based on the true events surrounding the relationship of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, the show takes some liberties in presenting certain aspects of the story. One could say that the opening scene does the same, or rather, it doesn’t give the full picture (or at least, what’s believed to be the full picture according to the accounts of witnesses), at least, not yet. In the FX series, John mentions that they are flying with an instructor because he couldn’t make it. In real life, a different account surfaced during the investigation of the crash. John was known to have been in the middle of his training as a pilot, but according to reports, he was believed to have limited experience of flying, especially at night.
According to the report of the National Transportation Safety Board, following an investigation into the crash, an unnamed flight instructor had offered to fly with John that night. Reportedly, the instructor did not feel comfortable with letting John fly the plane on his own, especially at night, with conditions that did not seem fit to fly, given the intense haze of fog that night. However, the instructor stated in the report that John refused his proposal and reportedly said that he wanted to fly the plane by himself. Another aviation analyst came forward with his account, giving more details about the weather that night. Kyle Bailey, who works as an aviation analyst for several news channels, self-published a book named ‘Witness: JFK Jr.’s Fatal Flight,’ in which he shared the details of what happened that night.
He stated that he himself had canceled his flight to Martha’s Vineyard that night because the weather didn’t feel right. He said that he saw John and Carolyn arriving at the airport, getting on their plane, and taking off with Carolyn’s sister, Lauren. Bailey noted that when he saw the passengers getting in the plane, which John was supposed to fly, he had a thought, “I hope he has an instructor with him.” He, however, wasn’t the one who offered to be John’s instructor. The next morning, he heard the news about a plane crashing in the Atlantic Ocean, and he was shocked to discover that it was JFK Jr.’s plane. The show’s pilot episode seems to have changed the scene up a little bit, but it does show that John decided to fly without an instructor that night, and had it not been so, one can only assume that things could have gone differently.
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