I read the autobio of Dion DiMucci of Dion and the Belmonts who was on that tour. He said the people in charge of that tour were complete morons. They gave them school buses meant for delivering school kids locally and used it to tour half the northern country in the dead of winter. And these were the buses that have a single heater by the driver. It got so cold their drummer had to be hospitalized for frost bite, plus he said the bus would constantly break down.
To me that’s what killed them, they would have never taken that plane if they had a tour planned by pros. My theory is they had no respect for rock and rollers back then, they saw them as stupid kids and easy marks to rip off. Ritchie Valens was only 17,
I have always wondered why some of the hottest acts in the pop music world were traveling long distances on unheated buses through the upper Midwest in the middle of winter. One would think they would have had enough money to fly on private planes wherever they wanted to go.