Last Known Person to See JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessett Alive Reveals Private Concerns About Their Flight (EXCLUSIVE)

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• Kyle Bailey, the last known person to see JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessett and her sister, Lauren alive on July 16, 1999, reveals what he saw that night.

• Bailey, who had canceled plans to fly to Martha’s Vineyard that afternoon because of thick smoke, thought, “I hope he has an instructor” when he saw JFK Jr. take off in his plane.

• The next morning, when Bailey called to check the weather, there was a Johns Piper missing plane alert for Saratoga. “My heart sank,” she recalls

On July 16, 1999, Kyle Bailey, then 25, was at the Essex County Airport in Caldwell, N.J. He had planned to fly to Martha’s Vineyard that evening but changed his mind because of the weather.

While monitoring his plane at the airport, Bailey saw John F. Kennedy Jr. and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessett, arrive in John’s white Hyundai convertible, followed by Carolyn Bessett in a Kennedy town car.

John had planned to fly out that evening, first to drop off Lauren at Martha’s Vineyard, and then to fly to Hannis Port for his brother Rory Kennedy’s wedding the next day for him and Caroline. At the time, he was in the process of receiving his instrument training and flying according to visual flight rules.

Bailey, 52, an aviation analyst for Fox News and other outlets, is now sharing the details of that night and its tragic ending in a new book, Witness: The Fatal Flight of JFK JrSelf-published on Amazon.

“Witness: JFK Jr.’s Fatal Flight” by Kyle Bailey

According to Bailey’s recollection, around 4 p.m. on July 16, 1999, he canceled plans to fly to Martha’s Vineyard.

“It was getting darker and darker as the temperature rose and I was worried that the fog might spread over the coast soon,” he told PEOPLE. “The worry was, if the fog covered everything as I approached the island, there would be no way for me to maintain a visual view of the airport.”

“You need a visual horizon to maintain level flight,” he explains.

Around 8 o’clock that night, Bailey saw John arrive at the airport wearing a white t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap. He was walking on only one crutch, having removed a cast from his knee the previous day (from a summer paragliding accident).

“I saw him often at the airport, and so did Caroline,” Bailey notes. “John will have his dog [Friday] with him Everyone knew him there but people left him alone. I used to see him on the pay phone and nobody knew who he was.”

The night of July 16, 1999 “was quiet,” says Bailey, who witnesses John doing his preflight checks. Later, he says, “I saw John and Caroline having a private discussion by the hangar.”

“Before I knew it, he started the engine,” he continues. “I heard the engine rev and saw the airplane take off and make a final turn, directly east, over Long Island Sound.”

“The sky was deep orange, and the sun was setting,” he recalls. “It was very dusty, hot and humid. I remember thinking, ‘I hope he has a trainer.’ “

The Johns Piper Saratoga took off at 8:38 that night.

What Bailey didn’t know was that earlier in the day, John had told his flight instructor that he didn’t need him and that he was going to “go it alone.”

When Bailey woke up the next morning, he recalls, “It was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky. I checked the weather on the 800 number for the FAA flight service station between 6 and 7 a.m. to get the forecast to see if I could fly.”

“Before anything happened, there was a missing airplane alert,” he says. “The red and white Piper Saratoga took off from Essex Country Airport at 8:40 that night with the tail number. My heart sank because it was John’s tail number.”

Five days later, the wreckage of the Jones Piper Saratoga was found in the Atlantic Ocean about seven miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard, and the bodies of three passengers were recovered from the sea floor.

The final report of the NTSB’s aviation investigation concluded: “The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of the accident: the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the aircraft during a nighttime landing over water, which was the result of spatial deviation. Contributors to the accident were smoke and dark night.”

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