I'm not a pilot but I'm a risk management enthusiast and skeptic. Thank you all for the interesting read. Truly unfortunate the scenario Sala ended up in.
I think one problem is that most people are taught to ignore aviation risk. Low probability = silly and impossible. But on the contrary you are rolling a dice every time you fly and must be prepared to face the consequences of your decisions.
Also here in the US it seems like somebody can drop out of college, go to flight school for a couple years and then fly their own foreign students on their own. Regional flights don't come too long after that.
Again truly sad that literally everything went wrong. But reading this discussion makes me impressed how many options you guys have to potentially make it out of this scenario such as higher altitude, immersion suits, and communicating with controllers to make sure search and rescue knows exactly where you go down. That makes me a bit less nervous but I still always wanna fly commercial.