Thursday, October 28, 2021
Profi died in plane crash
Guilty verdict in the Sala tragedy
When Emiliano Sala is on his way to his new club, the professional footballer’s plane crashes into the English Channel, the player and the pilot die. Almost three years after the tragedy, legal reappraisal has reached a milestone.
A good two and a half years after the fatal plane accident of professional footballer Emiliano Sala, the organizer of the flight has been found guilty. A jury in Cardiff decided that the 67-year-old businessman was responsible for endangering the safety of the machine. The public prosecutor had accused the man of having acted “recklessly and negligently”.
The 28-year-old Sala was to move from French club FC Nantes to Welsh club Cardiff City in a million dollar transfer. On the flight between the two cities, the single-engine Piper Malibu business jet crashed into the English Channel near the island of Guernsey on January 21, 2019. The Argentine Sala and the 59-year-old pilot David Ibbotson died. The amateur pilot did not have a valid license for commercial flights. He had also not completed any training hours for night flights, was probably affected by carbon monoxide poisoning at the time of the crash and was traveling too fast. It was only after almost two weeks of searching that the plane was discovered on the ocean floor.
The 67-year-old entrepreneur arranged the flight together with an agent, but was unable to fly because he was in Paris with his wife. Instead, he asked Ibbotson to take over the flight, which was regularly on his behalf. The verdict is due to be announced on November 12th. Henderson was accused of running a “cowboy business” after admitting that he did not keep basic information about the pilots he employed. Henderson had admitted that he knew Ibbotson only had a private pilot license (PPL) but was unaware that the pilot was not allowed to fly in the dark.
“We have to be very careful”
Chat messages that the now guilty Briton and Ibbotson exchanged in the weeks and months before the unfortunate flight, however, indicated something else: There both had discussed the pilot’s lack of night flight authorization, and the entrepreneur had encouraged the pilot to acquire it to “make it official”.
Even so, Ibbotson was still allowed to fly. A message to the pilot said: “We both have the opportunity to make money with the business model, but not if we annoy customers or attract the attention of the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) .) draw on us “. The jury later learned that after the crash, the contractor told an aircraft engineer to “be very quiet” and added, “We have to be very careful: ‘We have to be very careful. That brings up a whole wasp nest”.
The pilot’s body was never found
Cardiff FC had signed Sala in the winter transfer window, a record transfer of the then Premier League club of 15 million pounds (17.8 million euros) was agreed. Sala had already signed his contract in Cardiff and had returned to Nantes to pick up his things and say goodbye to his teammates. The tragedy occurred on January 21, 2019; the search for Sala was initially stopped after a few days.
After a crowdfunding campaign in which stars like Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé also participated, a private search campaign was started. Sala’s body was recovered from the wreck in February 2019, while Ibbotson’s body has never been found. Sala’s father Horacio died of a heart attack two months after the body was found. Research found that both Sala and Ibbotson were carbon monoxide poisoned due to bad weather prior to the crash.