Once upon a time, I spent a lot of time flying airplanes. More recently I "drove Uber" with my red pickup. Most ride share passengers love riding in a pickup, Many find it very unusual.
In mid-March moments before pandemic fears brought almost everything to a halt, I picked up a young man at Logan, his destination about an hour's drive Northwest near 495. He explained that he was going home for his father's funeral, killed the day before in a small plane crash.
Pilots usually think about avoiding and preventing their demise while flying and are constantly reviewing emergency procedures for possibilities that could lead to death. Naturally I wanted to understand what happened and my passenger he did not hesitate to tell; crashed on takeoff. Probably engine failure at the worst time, no altitude and airspeed to trade for altitude and possible more time to figure out what to do. No time to think, plan. You react by trained instinct.
It seems that my passenger also thought about these same things as he was smart, an engineer and had flown with his father on multiple occasions. This was a most melancholic hour long ride. The last ride before the pandemic killed the economy and many Americans
.