Piper Saratoga

The Piper Aircraft Inc. manufactured Piper Saratoga. JFK Jr. bought a used Piper Sarotoga 1995 make from Munir Hussain for $200,000, which is less than half the price of a good sports car. It had an annual inspection on June 28, and had a total of 622.8 flight hours. The previous owner put a recording device which could have recorded cabin and cockpit conversations and also any radio transmissions from the plane. But later proved the device recovered was a useless one. The plane carry no survival equipments, but its one of the complex aircrafts, with an autopilot.

John McColgan, the pilot examiner with FAA and former Air force flight mechanic who is twice on the Air force One flight crew, when JFK was the US President, tested the skills of JFK Jr last year for pilot license in Vero Beach, Florida. "JFK Jr did excellent in technical and commonsense questions." He did a great job when John took him to the skies for two hours.

"On average, the prospective pilot have about 65 hours of cockpit training, but Kennedy had close to100 hours. He had at least three hours of instrument training, the minimum to get a private pilot license to fly, but it takes 44 hours of flight training to learn instrumentation. During the flight portion of his test, about 15 minutes, he flew with instruments alone. JFK Jr earned a rating permitting him to fly visually. "Its the first time in signing off on pilot in 18 years that one has even got hurt. Its something that's hard to believe," add the examiner.

Commercial Pilot License is entirely a different ball game.