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Around 8:10, Kennedy pulled into the West Essex Sunoco station just across the street from the airport. Jack Tabibian, who owns the station, was accustomed to seeing Kennedy stop in when he came out to fly, but never this late. "He usually showed up between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.," Tabibian says. If J.F.K. Jr. was concerned about the late hour and the fast-setting sun, he didn't show it. Walking unhurriedly into the store wearing a light gray T shirt, he made a bit of small talk with Mesfin Gebreegziabher, who was manning the cash register. Gebreegziabher asked after Kennedy's leg, and Kennedy reported it was feeling better. As was his custom, Kennedy bought a banana and a bottle of mineral water and this time threw in six AA batteries. On his way out, he briefly lingered by a magazine rack near the front door, scanning the day's headlines.
What Kennedy was thinking as he climbed back into his Hyundai and drove across the street to the airport is impossible to know, but as a pilot, he was clearly up against it. Night was falling, and he had two stops to make that evening: one in Martha's Vineyard to drop off Lauren, then on to Hyannis Port. Earlier, Kyle Bailey, a local pilot, had canceled a planned flight from Essex because of a troubling haze that had already reduced visibility. Bailey decided to ground himself when he looked off in the distance for a familiar mountain ridge but couldn't see it. "That is a test that most pilots use at the airport," he says.
Nonetheless, around 8:30 p.m., shortly after Carolyn arrived in a black radio car, she, Kennedy and Lauren climbed inside the plane and belted themselves into its plush leather seats. At 8:38 p.m., 12 min. after sundown, the Essex tower cleared them for takeoff, and the wheels of the red- and-white Piper Saratoga left the ground.
What happened over the next hour or so--between the time the plane last made contact with the runway and the time it first made contact with water--is, for now, a matter of conjecture. The take-off, to all appearances, was a smooth one, suggesting that Kennedy's still shaky ankle did not hamper his ability to operate the Piper's pedals. Much of the flight may have been similarly uneventful, if the sketchy radar record is any indication.
Inside the plane, things must have been comfortable, even cozy. Heading east, across the Hudson and in the direction of Long Island Sound, Kennedy climbed to 5,600 ft., the typical altitude for small planes traveling by visual flight rules. To the left, the light-flecked coast of southern Connecticut was probably visible through the haze, as first Bridgeport, then New Haven, then New London provided a sort of luminous archipelago pointing east. The noise of the engine and the wind would have made it difficult for the occupants to talk to one another, but the plane was equipped with headphones that would have made conversation easy. The position of the bodies at the crash site suggests that Carolyn and Lauren were sitting in the rear of the six-seat cabin, behind Kennedy. Overhead lights controlled by armrest switches would have allowed them to pass the time reading; a fold-down writing table gave them a place to rest a book.