My son is a pilot and I am an aviation enthusiast. That being said, whenever anyone uses the phrase "he died doing something he loved" I am always reminded that people who love to smoke often die of cancer and people who love drugs often die of overdoses. The only excuse for dying in a solo aircraft accident should be that you were dead before you made an uncontrolled flight into terrain.
My cousin died in a plane crash about a week after he took me up in his new Cessna 180. He loved to fly, but I would not be so bold as to say he died doing something he loved. There is not a lot of room for mistakes once your wheels leave the ground. My son worked in a flight school. He worked there about a year and in that amount of time he got to know at least three people who died in aircraft accidents and two more who barely survived one. All the crashes involved pilot error.
Whenever we talk about a pilot who has been killed in a flying accident, we should all keep one thing in mind. He called upon the sum of all his knowledge and made a judgment. He believed in it so strongly that he knowingly bet his life on it. That his judgment was faulty is a tragedy, not stupidity. Every instructor, supervisor, and contemporary who ever spoke to him had an opportunity to influence his judgment, so a little bit of all of us goes with every pilot we lose.
- author unknown