Striker Emiliano Sala was only 28 years old. The 59-year-old pilot David Ibbotson also died next to him
Source: dpa / Jacob King
In January 2019, Emiliano Sala disappeared without a trace. The professional soccer player crashed as a passenger on an airplane. The pilot was also killed. Now the organizer of the flight has been convicted. He was accused of serious misconduct.
Fnast three years after the fatal plane crash of the Argentinian soccer professional Emiliano Sala, the person who commissioned the flight has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. The 67-year-old businessman David Henderson was found guilty by a Cardiff court in October of compromising the safety of the machine.
Henderson, who organized the flight in January 2019, was found guilty by a majority of ten to two at the end of October. The convict’s lawyers announced they would appeal.
The 28-year-old Sala was to move from French club FC Nantes to Welsh club Cardiff City in a million dollar transfer. The Welsh had signed the former striker in the winter transfer window, agreed a record transfer for the then Premier League club of 17.8 million euros.
Keep quiet, “it opens a can of worms”
The plane was supposed to bring Sala from Nantes in France to Cardiff. On the journey 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.
Images of an underwater robot from the plane wreck
Source: dpa / –
The English entrepreneur Henderson, a former Royal Air Force officer, had arranged the flight together with a player’s agent but was unable to fly because he was on vacation in Paris with his wife. Instead, he asked Ibbotson to take over the flight, which was regularly on his behalf.
Henderson is a family man of three
Source: dpa / Jacob King
Moments after finding out the plane had crashed, Henderson texted a number of people telling them to stay still – warning that it would “open a can of worms.” He said in court that he feared an investigation into his business relationships.
A lawyer representing the Sala family welcomed Henderson’s convictions in a statement, saying she hoped the civil aviation authority would ensure “illegal flights of this kind are stopped. David Henderson’s actions are only part of the puzzle as the plane that David Ibbotson illegally flown crashed into the sea on January 21, 2019, ”said Daniel Machover.
He still doesn’t know “the most important information about the aircraft’s maintenance history and all the factors behind the carbon monoxide poisoning revealed in August 2019.”
He said the answers to these questions could not be found until the investigation, which is due to begin next February, and urged the US aircraft manufacturer Piper Aircraft, whose product range the accident aircraft came from, and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Department to provide relevant material to be fully disclosed as soon as possible.
This is to ensure “that the investigation can fulfill its function of fully and fearlessly examining the evidence so that all facts come to light,” said the lawyer. “Only when that happens will Emiliano’s family finally learn the truth about this tragedy and everyone Learn lessons so that no family will suffer a similar preventable death. “
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