There is something uniquely haunting about an air crash. It is the kind of catastrophe that is both sudden and protracted, a fleeting moment of terror seemingly suspended in time, leaving behind the kind of wreckage that is measured not just in debris but in the lives it claims and the lives it shatters of the loved ones who are left behind.
The midair collision near the Washington Reagan National Airport last month that claimed 67 lives was the deadliest aviation disaster on U.S. soil in nearly 25 years. In those final moments, flight recorder data indicates how the pilots of the doomed American Airlines flight fought against fate itself, pulling the nose of the plane up, desperately trying to salvage even a sliver of hope. This is similar to what happened to Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303 in Karachi five years ago. But tragically, it was too late.
In the seconds before impact, perhaps they too, like many others before them, felt their entire lives unfold before their eyes, as I too had experienced.
Unspoken responsibility
For those who remain, there is something deeply unsettling about a tragedy like this. We cycle through horror, grief, and a helpless kind of sorrow, knowing that nothing we do can rewind time or rewrite history. But there is something else, too — a quiet, unspoken responsibility.
When people vanish in preventable tragedies, the burden of their loss does not just belong to their families; it belongs to all of us. It forces us to confront questions of justice, accountability, and, perhaps most agonizingly, the randomness of fate itself.
I know this weight personally. On May 22, 2020, I boarded a PIA flight that never truly landed. It was meant to be a routine trip home for Eid, a simple journey from Lahore to Karachi. Instead, the plane crash-landed in a densely populated neighborhood, killing 97 of the 99 people on board. I was one of the two who survived.
Survival from such an accident is not just a miracle — it is a paradox. Why me? Why not them? These questions live inside me, dormant yet ever-present, stirring awake every time another tragedy unfolds.
When I read about the Washington crash, I could imagine the chaos in the cockpit, the passengers gripping their seats, the terrible weight of inevitability in those final moments. And I visualise the collateral survivors — the families left behind, the air traffic controllers who might have caught a different detail, the people who changed their flight at the last moment. Because after a tragedy, survival itself feels like both a gift and a debt. And that debt demands to be repaid.
We cannot change what happened over the skies of Washington. But we can ask ourselves: What do we owe to those who perished?
We owe them the truth. The investigations must be relentless. Early reports indicate scrutiny on air traffic controller staffing, the complexity of Washington’s airspace, and possible miscalculations in altitude. The families of the victims deserve more than vague reassurances. They deserve transparency, accountability, and a system that does not repeat its failures.
We owe them change. The Federal Aviation Administration’s new restrictions on helicopter traffic near Reagan National Airport are a start, but they are not enough. This is not the first crash involving airspace confusion, nor will it be the last unless policy meets urgency. We owe it to the dead to fix what is broken.
We owe them a memory. Tragedies fade from headlines, but grief lingers in the bones of those left behind. Memorials, safety reforms, foundations — these are the ways in which those who pass on are not forgotten. This is how we make meaning from loss.
We owe them our lives, fully lived. If you have ever escaped death, you know that every breath afterward feels borrowed. The burden of survival is the question of purpose — what will you do with this bonus life? It is easy to sink into guilt, to let grief dictate your days.
But the real tribute to the dead is to live with the kind of intention they no longer have the chance to. It is to love harder, to be kinder, to leave no important words unsaid. It is to make sure that when your own final moment comes — whether in a slow fade or in the sudden, brutal rupture of an accident — you are at peace with the life you have led.
In the end, every tragedy leaves behind lessons. The only question is whether we choose to learn from them. I have shared my peculiar lessons as a survivor of an air crash which I owe on my part to humanity in my latest book ‘Seat 1C’.
For the 67 lives lost in Washington, D.C. — and the thousands lost before them — may we choose to learn. And may we, the living, carry their memory forward with the weight and honour it deserves.
Zafar Masud is an international banker and entrepreneur. This is a Sapan News syndicated feature.
