An added passenger on a small plane would likely have changed the speed/trajectory/flight path ever so slightly and the outcome could have been very different. It’s useless to speculate on the what ifs. Every step one takes, every small encounter can have cosmic proportions.
For example when I decide to step out of my home the exact second may make a life and death difference. I may pull in to the shul parking lot at the exact moment that Plony is about to pull out. The 5 second delay he has getting in the highway means he is never in the path of the tractor trailer that veered out of lane and was destined to take his life and the whole trajectory of his wife, his children and grandchildrens lives is forever changed because I decided to come to davening 5 minutes early. Or it may be the delay puts him smack in the path of the truck and I am the factor that costed him his life.
I sat at a small event with someone who was fatally hit by a car crossing the street later that night. The thought fleetingly crossed my mind that if I had not engaged him in conversation for a couple of minutes as he was getting ready to leave his schedule could very well have changed and he would have crossed the road later that night just a minute or two earlier. He would still be there for his family and clients. But that fleeting thought was it. You move on.
You may have been the guy who walked into the chasunah with asymptomatic Covid the week before that fateful Purim time in 2020 and killed the grandparents of the chosson, the family Rov, and three friends of the family. You will never know. You are not meant to know.
One can obsess endlessly about these things but no one is privy to the השגחה עליונה that is בכל עת ובכל שעה. The bochur should certainly have a sense of gratitude that he is alive but there is no way to know if his joining the flight would have meant death or would have saved lives. מה עמקו מחשבותיך. They are not for us to comprehend.
