There are no words to comfort anybody who’s been affected by a plane crash. In an instant, many lives can be violently cut short – drastically and forever changing the futures of the friends and family who are left behind. It is particularly devastating whenever a large group of people is traveling together. Suddenly, a whole community is plunged into mourning for the lives that are lost, the dreams that are dashed and the potential that will never be fulfilled. It also often imperils the very existence of the project they’d been working on. In the early 1960s, Atlanta was on the cusp of desegregation and investment was starting to flow in. The city’s leaders in arts dreamed of elevating the High Museum of Art into a world-class institution and their plans were taking shape as they embarked on a group trip to Europe; sadly, they never returned. One hundred twenty-two people died that day. Everyone from the Atlanta group, 106 of the city’s most dedicated champions of art, perished in the wreckage of an Air France jet on the outskirts of Paris in 1962. The group comprised of artists, collectors, patrons and board members, among others, and their dream for improving Atlanta died with them. Many of the city’s artists today lament that the Orly crash robbed Atlanta of its future, decades of progress lost as the visual arts scene instead flourished elsewhere. The impact can be just as acute whenever a sports club is in the wrong place at the wrong time. While aviation disasters are fortunately rare, there are too many examples of teams that have perished on snowy runways or rural hillsides; disasters that have consequences for a program that might take a generation or more to rebuild. 
15 FEB 1994: EUGENIA SHISHKOVA AND VADIM NAUMOV OF RUSSIA IN ACTION IN THE PAIRS FREE PROGRAM AT THE 1994 LILLEHAMMER WINTER OLYMPICS. Mandatory Credit: Chris Cole/ALLSPORT Chris Cole/AllSport/Getty Images Related article Plane crash kills world champion figure skaters and the ‘future’ of the sport in a tragic case of déjà vu It’s too soon to fully comprehend the loss of so many talented young figure skaters in January’s Washington, DC, crash, when American Airlines flight 5342 collided with a Black Hawk helicopter on its final approach to the runway at Washington Reagan National Airport. But it’s clear that the loss is profound, 14 young members of the US Figure Skating team were on board. Many were on a trajectory to possibly compete in the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps. Tragically, the same figure skating program had already experienced such loss. In 1961, the 18-member team was heading to the world championships in Prague when their plane crashed in Brussels. Everybody on board perished, the death toll also including coaches, judges and team officials. The World Championships were cancelled, and the Americans had to start from scratch ahead of the 1964 Olympics. Most of their athletes were too young to compete in Innsbruck, and it was something of an achievement that they still won a medal. The latest crash is particularly tragic – some of the skaters weren’t even teenagers yet – and the loss of their coaches will make it even harder to train the athletes who will inevitably now step into their skates. When Brazil’s Chapecoense football team headed to Colombia in November 2016, they wouldn’t have imagined that anything could stop them. They’d been promoted four times in just eight years and were about to play in the biggest game in their history – the final of the Copa Sudamericana tournament. But when LaMia flight 2933 was just 11 miles from landing in Medellin, the lights in the cabin went dark – the plane had run out of fuel. Shortly afterwards it crashed into a mountain ridge, killing 71 of the 77 people on board. Only three players survived. Virtually the whole squad, its coaches and front office staff were killed. Forty-eight hours later, when the game should have been played against Atlético Nacional, the club’s fans gathered at their home stadium in Chapeco to mourn their loss. One of the most poignant scenes witnessed that night was of the players who’d not made the trip, men who’d been injured or who’d been cut from the squad, linking hands and walking a lap of the field. The shock and pain were etched deep into their faces.
Source: edition.cnn.com