I was numb with shock when I read that in an NTSB accident report. “The pilot jumped to his death from 900 feet agl to escape the flame-engulfed cockpit.”

I really had not considered any emergency to seem that bad to the occupants until I visited a friend in the hospital who had survived a cockpit fire three days before. He was badly burned over most of his body and had just woken up from a drug-induced coma to help him get through the painful cleaning process. It was awful. …