A monday

Reading that it was a Monday bothered me...
Sept. 25, 1978 was a Monday.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19780925-0

Also, Allegheny 853

http://www.mcglaun.com/69story.htm

In the final one or two tenths of a second, Mr. Carey would haveseen the large plane pass right in front of him. Because of the relative motion of the two craft, his plane would have been in one instant pointed right toward the cockpit of the DC-9, about 50 feet away. Then, in the next instant, it passed directly over the large right wing (30 feet), then above the engines (10 feet), and then…. When this sight hit his eyes, though, his brain would not have had time to react by sending a message to his arms to yank on the control wheel. He would not have had time to say anything, or do anything, or probably even think anything. If he had been looking down at a chart, he would've merely looked up from it -- into blackness. More likely, the blackness came as his head was turned away. Was his the easiest death, or the worst? He died instantly, without even being able to have the comfort of a last thought for the wife and children he loved so much.

Surely, though, there had to have been a passenger on the starbord side of the DC-9 who was looking out their window at just the right instant. They would have seen the Piper down and to their left, not moving in the window, but growing slightly larger. Then, in those last tenths of a second, the blossom of the small plane would have coincided with the beginning of its rapid relative motion upward and toward the right side of their window, and they would have vaguely recognized it, but only as something that was definitely not supposed to be there. Then, the impact. While everyone else on board was wondering what in the world that jolt could have been, and why they were turning left, and then, why they were going inverted, and then, why the pilot wasn't doing anything about it, well, our unlucky passenger would have been the only one, as the realization dawned of just exactly what that thing out there had been, who understood it all.