When and how did John Denver die?
John Denver had a longtime love of flying.
In 1974, he bought a Learjet to fly himself to concerts. He was a collector of vintage biplanes, and owned a Christen Eagle aerobatic plane, two Cessna 210 Centurion airplanes, and in 1997 an amateur-built Rutan Long-EZ.
It crashed after making a series of touch-and-go landings at the nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport.
Denver was the plane’s only occupant at the time. The official cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma resulting from the crash.
At the time, John Denver was a pilot with over 2,700 hours of experience. He was not legally permitted to fly at the time of the crash. In previous years, he had several arrests for drunk driving.
In 1996, nearly a year before the accident, the FAA discovered that Denver had failed to stay sober, and revoked his medical certification. However, the accident was not influenced by alcohol, as an autopsy found no sign of alcohol or other drugs in Denver’s body.
After the announcement of Denver’s death, Colorado Governor Roy Romer ordered all state flags to be lowered to half-staff in his memory.
On September 23, 2007, nearly 10 years after John Denver’s death, his brother Ron attended the dedication of a plaque placed near the crash site in Pacific Grove, California.
