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ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, JULY 21: The wreckage of John F Kennedy Jr's airplane was located today, with Kennedy's body still aboard, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
``They've got the fuselage and John Kennedy's in it,'' a high-level government source said.
Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, and Coast Guard Rear Admiral Richard Larrabee, who was overseeing the search, cancelled a round of morning TV appearances and went to the USS Grasp, the ship where the wreckage was to be deposited after being raised from the ocean floor.
The heightened activity took place after ships from the Navy, Coast Guard and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration spent Tuesday night scouring a site 12 km southwest of the Martha's Vineyard coast, a spot that investigators had speculated was the likely splash point for the plane.
It crashed on Friday night while carrying Kennedy, 38, his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, 34. There was noimmediate word about whether the women's bodies had been located.
Government sources said Kennedy family aides and friends were in New York, planning a memorial service for all three victims, perhaps on Saturday.
Several experienced pilots who flew into the Vineyard on Friday night said the hazy skies and darkness were challenging even for them.
At a briefing on Tuesday, Robert Pearce, who is heading the investigation for the National Transportation Safety Board, gave a more detailed explanation of the approach.
All seemed fine about 55 km from the airport with the plane descending from 1,680 metres to about 690 metres at a slightly faster-than-normal rate of 210 metres per minute.
About 32 km from the airport, the plane started turning to the right and climbing slightly back to 780 metres.
After leveling off at that altitude, it flew for a short time before beginning another turn to the right and starting ``a rapid rate of descent'' that may have exceeded 1,500 metres per minute. That is 10 timesfaster than normal and even faster than the 1,410-metre-per-minute estimate from Monday's briefing.
The descent was 900 metres per minute faster than what would be a stressful approach for even the most experienced flier, experts said.
Pearce would not speculate on the damage caused by such a crash, but said: ``I'm sure you can draw a conclusion by the debris we've been bringing in, which is fragmented.''
On the fourth full day of the search, FAA acknowledged it was asked in a phone call from an intern at the Martha's Vineyard airport to help locate the plane on Friday night.
The caller, 21-year-old Adam Budd, expressed no great urgency as he telephoned an FAA station in Bridgeport, Connecticut on Friday, FAA officials said.
He said he called at the request of an unidentified couple who had come to the airport to meet Lauren Bessette. Kennedy and his wife had planned to drop her off on their way to Hyannis Port for his cousin's wedding.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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