Laura Benson Jones on the JFK Jr crash and Flight Club 502

Flight Instructor Laura Benson Jones discusses the anniversary of the John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash and what went wrong. She also discussed her "youth development program" Flight Club 502...

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I have a guest in the studioand I'm still sweaty from working out today,
So you just keep your distance.So we're there. Laura Benson Jones,
my flight instructor is here. It'sgood to see you. It's good
to see you, Terry. Thanksfor having me. We've spent time in
aircraft. You know, it's flyingover looking at things, doing this that
or whatever. But your jobs toteach people, and you teach a lot

(00:22):
of different students. Sure, Ialways say you are the greatest flight instructor
in this whole area. Well,thank you very much. There are a
lot of great flight instructors. Wellthere are, but you are a calm
and a clear communicator. That makesa difference because you know, I you
know, obviously you get instruction froma lot of people over the course of

(00:43):
years, and you know, I'vehad some really good ones, and then
some people, well talk, wellwhat what what did you say? We're
flying on air plane here. Well, I mean there's Laura in the airplane
and there's Laura out of the airplane. So what's the difference in tone?
You mean? I mean, Ithink I've given a lot of flight instruct
a lot of flight in structure.I started teaching in nineteen ninety, but

(01:04):
when I'm in the airplane, Iam all business. Oh yeah, you
have to be you have to beserious business. So you don't do a
mom voice any of that. Butyou and I have flown enough hours where
seriously, you get into some areasand people are flying around on a unicom
channel. It's just an open channelto land somewhere, and I don't have

(01:26):
any idea what someone has said.No, they mumble a lot of people
right, And these uncontrolled airports aroundthe country aren't required to even talk on
the radio. Hooterville common holderveil whatWait what what? What? What did
you say? Where are you?What are you doing? Tell me how
that goes. You're doing something reallygreat called flight Club five oh two,

(01:48):
and we're going to talk about thatin a minute or two because you're making
sure that young people get it interestedand stay interested in general aviation. Well,
you know, it's really life skills. Yeah, it's a uta bell
program, but we're using airplanes toget carried absolutely, and then that's a
great discipline. First though, Todayis the twenty fifth anniversary of the death
of John F. Kennedy Junior.His wife Carolyn Bassett, Kennedy, and

(02:12):
Lauren Bassett, who was Carolyn's sister. We all know this story, but
as a flight instructor, I justwanted to get your take on this.
Let me read you a little piecehere I was reading earlier today the NTSB's
Jeff Guzzetti recalling the day, talkingabout taking off from Jersey. I don't
think he intended on taking off atnight, but it just worked out that

(02:32):
way. Well, first off,everybody can fly at night. That's not
an issue. The airplane doesn't knowif it's night or day. It's visual
conditions, right versus instrument conditions,And it was visual when he took off.
Was it this guy? This NTSBguy, says Guzzetti says, believes

(02:53):
he was on John F. Kennedywas on autopilot for most of the journey,
but as he turned toward mark hisvineyard, he disengaged, either on
purpose or by accident, and hisflying became erratic. Yeah know, we
don't even We won't know that becausewhen they found the wreckage, there was
not an autopilot engage, of course, but he went into a spiral essentially

(03:17):
from because when you go in,let's just use the marker of the visual
as a cloud. Right, let'sjust say you flew into a cloud.
It doesn't matter if it's night orday. You can't see, you don't
know if you're up or down,because that's what vertigo is all about.
Right, absolutely, you know what, there were many accidents. Don't just
there's not one factor to an accident. There are many layers. And that's

(03:42):
why even examining what happened, thisis a tragedy. But what happened was
he was supposed to take off earlyin the afternoon and his wife and her
sister, I can't remember if itwas traffic, but they were three or
four hours late to the airport.He was sitting in the airplane flighted ready
to go when the girls got there. Both girls got in the back.

(04:03):
He had a Saratoga, which isa piper aircraft. It was a beautiful
airplane, and you know, theyboth got in the back, so he
didn't have anyone in the right seat. Okay, So this is an important
point in terms of center of gravity, as I wasn't worried so much about
the center of gravity because of boththe ladies were very fit and thin,

(04:27):
and they weren't they weren't heavy,but he he didn't have anyone in the
right seat that he could have handedthe mic to to make a call or
you know, having even an inexperiencedperson sitting in the right seat is better
than no one in the right seat. We've started so back in the day
when I was full time flight instructing, we we taught right seat classes,

(04:50):
and after he passed away, wealmost made it. I don't want to
see mandatory, but we went.We ran people through who were going to
fly with their spout and taught themsome really basic one oh one lessons.
Well, on another topic, sometimesa pilot has a heart attack and the
person in the right seat can betaught. And it's been done where they

(05:12):
talked to a person who's not apilot, talked them into getting that airplane
back on the earth. I mean, I want everyone to think that I'm
a genius fly airplanes, but thetruth of the matter is it's really not
very difficult to fly an airplane.That's how I got a license. That's
a whole lot of fun. It'sa whole lot of fun, but it's
not It's not the hardest thing inthe world that you that you would accomplish,
but certainly he was a very experiencedpilot. But it just shows you

(05:41):
all these variables play a part,and him not having anyone in the right
seat played a part. Him takingoff three or maybe four hours after his
and you know he was planning ontaking off earlier. Do you mean a
fatigue factor. I don't know thathe was fatigued. It says that he
was fatigue I've read the report aswell. But just taking off, you

(06:01):
know, taking off during the daywas his intention. Also, weather changes,
Yeah, what did Mark Twain say? If you don't like the weather,
stick around and exactly as he's youknow, when he's flying in at
dusk, he knew, but hemade a determination to turn toward Martha's instead
of staying along the coastline, whichwould have added thirty more miles or whatever.

(06:23):
And there is a visual comfort.I've done this before, flying against
near the coast of the United States, out over the ocean, but close
up where I can see the shoreright and it just is a visual confirmation
that your level and you're moving.It's fatial disorientation. He he couldn't see,
uh, he could he couldn't determinethis guy from the ground. The

(06:46):
best thing in the world would havebeen for him to keep the autopilot on.
But we don't know for sure.No, No, we just don't
know. But so when you gointo this sort of a situation for people
that don't understand how it happened,you go in and you lose sight of
a horizon for lack of a betterexpression, and so you don't really know
if you're up or down, likebeing in fog, really really sick fog.

(07:09):
So he's he's kind of just losingthose senses and then before you know
it, it's turning too severely andthen ultimately just turns into a spiral.
They say, you know this whenwe're training people for instrument flying, and
you know you remember your training.I never forget my training. One are
the two most important things in flying? The next two things Either I use

(07:29):
that in my life. I knowit's life skills. And by the way,
that means the next thing you're supposedto do, you have ready,
whether it's a radio frequency or knowingthe runway, this, that, whatever,
and then you already have the nextthing loaded in your mind behind it
in case the first thing doesn't workout. That's why I learning to fly
airplanes is one of the best thingsyou'll ever do because it's life skills,
and you use these lessons to doother things. But in this case,

(07:54):
you know, sometimes people trust wellhe trusted his uh, he trusts did
his looking out the window more thanhe trusted his instruments. Yeah, he
wasn't looking at the artificial horizon,which shows you at your level. Right,
and then just a tragedy, Justa horrific thing. We've changed everything.
Training changed after that accident because itreally illustrated the need for more training

(08:22):
for these entry level pilots, theprivate pilot. So we now have more
instrument training, and we do instrumenttraining for this level of flight training,
even in unusual attitudes. Was Kennedyin a plane that was too complex for
him? He was flying one eightytwo's prior to sess No. One eighty
two's Saratoga. There's more complexity tothat flight. I already read how many

(08:46):
hours he had in and he hada few at night, but only seven
or eight hours at night. Ididn't have much night Tom. That's hard
to gauge. But still it's astep up, isn't it. Well,
I mean he was flying the oneeighty two is a high wing Sesena.
It's it's faster than the four seatsSesstem one seventy two. That probably a

(09:09):
lot of the listeners have seen avery common trainer. The aircraft that he
purchased, which he was flying onthis particular evening, was a piper'sare Toga
with I think it's a three hundredhorsepower engine and retractable gear complex aircraft.
So it was fast. Yeah.Bottom line was there were a lot of

(09:31):
bad decisions made that evening, whethersomebody was late and this that or whatever,
but obviously it ended in tragedy.A lot of people are talking about
it today. A lot of peopleare talking about it, and we're not
letting his you know, his deathgo without trying to improve the way we
train pilots. So let's get intothat. You have Flight Club five zero
two. You say it's about lifeskills, but it does center on airplanes.

(09:52):
So you are creating some new pilotstoo, aren't you. Oh,
it's on our website, but Ithink we've soloed. So meaning go up
for your first fight all by yourself, around three hundred or three hundred fifty
kids, fantastic. You remember yourfirst time when they really do, when
your instructor says you're ready, andyou're like, am I really? And

(10:13):
my guy he told me I wasready to go, and then then I,
you know, I go over andstart the thing and taxi and do
it. And I distinctly remember this. This is thirty five, forty years
ago. You know, I'm inthe air above Bowman Field and I'm just
running the pattern and I'm thinking,oh my god, I'm in an airplane.
I'm the only person in it,so I'm the only person who can

(10:35):
put this back on the ground.But you've been trained enough by routes to
just know what to do. It'svery safe. I mean, flying airplanes
is safer than walking. It's extremelysafe, and it's safe because of the
training that we do to become pilots. What happened to John F. Kennedy
is very rare. That's why we'vespent so much time trying to understand how

(10:56):
it happened, so that we canprevent people from having accidents like that,
because they're absolutely avoidable. These aircraftare maintained by professionals, and the training
to become a pilot is stringent.But when we started the I started flying
airplanes in nineteen eighty five when Iwas sixteen years old, and it changed

(11:18):
my life. It changed my life. I don't know what trouble I might
have fallen into, but I definitelyfound a safe place, and that was
at the airport. And the peoplethat I met in the eighties who were
my role models, really helped timmold the rest of my life. And

(11:41):
I guess it was you know,I started teaching people how to fly in
nineteen ninety and I started flying jetaircraft in nineteen ninety four. I logged
a whole lot of flight toime.It got a little hard on my family
on the third child, when I'dbe gone for a week and I'd come
home and I'd see a shoe inthe butter dish, and I'd just be
like wow, I mean I yeah, yeah. The kids related to preschool
nevertheless, but I'd worked. Iworked a lot, I flew, you

(12:05):
know. I kind of semi retiredin twenty fifteen, and I started working
with some kids, my children's friendsand some of my nieces and nephews and
Clyde Inser's kids who I taught Clydehow to fly million years ago. But
Nevertheless, these kids started talking tome about some of the things they were
going through in high school, andit reminded me of what a safe place

(12:28):
the airport was for me as achild. It's fantastic. Where can people
learn more about Flight Club five Otwo Light Club five o two dot org?
See how that worked? Why don'tyou have a raffle for an aircraft
or what are you doing? It'sreally it's funny because we started this flight
club with no money, no airplane, and just a handful of kids and

(12:50):
no facility. And when we firststarted, we had a raffle. Clyde
Inzer had a aircraft business, jetaircraft business, and he donated a ride
in a citation jet and the kidswent door to door selling raffle tickets and
so they were able to raise enoughmoney to buy a little airplane and a

(13:11):
Redbird simulator. And so then PeytonHogue and Jerry Mitchell donated a Piper cub
to the They said, those kidsneed another plane to fly. There's one
hundred kids here trying to find flyone airplane. This is back in twenty
seventeen, twenty eighteen, and wedecided to raffle the airplane the insurance company
didn't want the kids flying that nineteenforty six tail driger. I don't know

(13:33):
why, but we right, weraffled the plane. And so the raffle
is what provided us with the fundingto have this beautiful facility that ran at
Bowmenfield. We're in the old CurtisRight hangar on Taylorsville Road, and it's
afforded us the opportunity to buy airplanesand we used Diamond twenty aircraft, which

(13:54):
are the nicest airplanes you can useto fly fantastic, it's amazing. We
have seven airplanes and right now we'rerunning another raffle and it's on our website.
But there's seventy five dollars you canhave a chance to win out there.
You go, cheero key one fortyLaura, it's great seeing you again.
I love you, love you more. See how I win? All
right? The website is and thanksfor keeping me safe in the skies.

(14:15):
Flight Club five zero two dot org'swebsite back and a few on news radio
eight forty WHA s