Jesus Christ, this is awful. We assume footballers are so removed from normal life that when things like this happen it hits even harder than it otherwise would have anyway. Like when Aguero was injured in that car crash in Amsterdam - the initial reaction was "Oh, no, poor Serge!" but once the initial shock wore off it took you a second to remember that a footballer could even be involved in such a common and traumatic incident.
With regards to Sala, there are obvious echoes of the plane crash in Brazil, but it occurred in South America and the players who were lost in the crash had names we'd never heard of before, so that shock reminder that footballers aren't invincible didn't really hit in the way this one has. There was an element of separation from what happened. This time it's a Premier League footballer whose name has been at least the 2nd or 3rd sports headline every day for the past week, and we've all been smacked with the reminder that he's a human being, vulnerable to the whims of nature and failures of technology just like the rest of us.
There's hope that he might have survived the crash because the conditions were calm when the plane went missing, but they're also concerned that the currents are strong in the Channel and that they may have missed their best chance to find them. I've been reading around some Cardiff City forums and a user on one of them has mentioned that the plane struggled to take off and then crashed 8-10 miles from the French coast mid-flight. This is absolutely awful.