From 1991 through 2001, pop and R&B star Aaliyah Dana Haughton was one of the most popular singers in the world.
Aaliyah was discovered at 10 years old, signed at 12, and released her first album Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number when she was 15 in 1994. It would go on to sell three million copies. Unfortunately, tragedy struck on August 25, 2001, when the pop princess was killed in a private plane. She was just 22 years old.
Before she died, Aaliyah was filming a music video with then-superstar director Hype Williams in the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas. On July 7, 2001, Aaliyah released her self-titled third album. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 but the first single “We Need a Resolution” stalled a little, so her team hoped to pick things up with the next single for her song “Rock the Boat.”
The underwater scenes for the video were filmed in Miami but she flew to the Abaco Islands on Aug. 24. Williams called the time he spent with the singer “beautiful for everyone.”
“We all worked together as a family. The last day, Saturday, was one of the best I’ve had in this business. Everyone felt part of something special, part of her song.”
Aaliyah finished shooting the video earlier than expected on Aug. 25 and her team wanted her back in the States, so they chartered a Cessna 402 around 6:50pm. On board were her hair stylist, Eric Forman, make-up artist, Christopher Maldonado, friends Keith Wallace and Anthony Dodd, record company employees Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith, security guard Scott Gallon, and pilot Luis Morales III, who warned everyone that there were too many people on board and that the plane was too heavy.
The plane took off, made it barely 100 feet, and then crashed into a marsh right past the runway. When it hit the ground, the plane immediately burst into flames. In a book called Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah, released in 2021, author Kathy Iandoli claims that Aaliyah didn’t even want to get on the plane.
Iandoli said the singer wanted to wait for another plane and waited in a taxi but someone in her team gave her something to help her sleep and then carried her on the aircraft. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Iandoli said “The person who I thought had the most common sense in the world had common sense to not get on the plane. The fact that she was so adamant, staying in the cab, refusing—these are things we never knew.”
After the crash, authorities found the singer’s body 20 feet from the wreckage still strapped into her seat. Coroner Dr. Giovander Raju concluded that Aaliyah died from “severe burns and a blow to the head” while she experienced an extreme shock to her heart.
Raju also said she probably would have died from that shock even if she survived the crash. The Cessna was over its weight limit by 700 pounds, and in 2002 the toxicology report for the pilot, Morales, showed he had alcohol and cocaine in his system. Aaliyah’s funeral was held shortly after on Aug. 31, 2001.