A Pompano Beach-based company will auction a plane owned by the late John F. Kennedy Jr. — not the plane, but the airplane on which he learned to fly.
Next Saturday, Fisher Auction Co. Inc. will auction a 1977 Cessna Skylane that was owned by JFK Jr. from April 1998 to May 1999. He sold that plane after buying the single-engine Piper Saratoga he was flying when he and his passengers crashed and died July 16 last year.
The auction will take place at the same airport from which Kennedy departed the day he died: Essex County Airport in Fairfield, N.J. The plane carries a registration number of N529JK, which includes his late father’s initials and birthdate.
Bids will also be taken over the Internet, at the site, with registered parties being asked to prequalify by registering a $25,000 deposit.
The sale is on behalf of an anonymous party who helped JFK buy the plane, then bought it back from him, according to auctioneer Louis B. Fisher III. The airplane has been flying from that airport on the average of once every two weeks since Kennedy sold it.
Fisher said he did not think the auction in any way exploits the death of a celebrity.
“It’s a corporate asset; they need to dispose of it,” he said. “It’s like selling a piece of corporate real estate.” He said similar planes, depending on upgrades, have sold for $100,000 to $300,000.
It’s not like selling pieces of the plane that JFK died in; it’s more like selling a used car, said Ann Morales, assistant professor of business law and ethics at the University of Miami.
“The alternative would be to never sell it, and put it in a shrine,” she said.
Members of the Kennedy family have sold memorabilia. After Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ death, an auction raised $34.5 million with the proceeds going to charity and the JFK Library. But family members objected to a sale of memorabilia from the late president’s secretary, because they thought she had taken some personal items.
David Altaner can be reached at or 954-356-4668.
