Emiliano Sala: Cardiff City say they did not organise private plane as search for missing footballer and pilot continues

Emiliano Sala: Cardiff City say they did not organise private plane as search for missing footballer and pilot continues
Emiliano Sala booked his own private flight across the English Channel after turning down a commercial flight from Cardiff City, it emerged today.Cardiff’s new 15million signingwas due to join his teammates in South Wales on Tuesday morning for training but never arrived as the light aircraft he was travelling on from Nantes on Monday night disappeared from radar close to Guernsey.

#CardiffCity is delighted to announce the Club-record signing of @EmilianoSala1, subject to international clearance. https://t.co/goA1v3wtWi@eToro #CityAsOne pic.twitter.com/Uyv670nVBV— Cardiff City FC (@CardiffCityFC) January 19, 2019

The single-turbine engine Piper PA-46 Malibu, carrying the footballer and his pilot, left Nantes at 7.15pm for Cardiff and after requesting to descend, lost contact with Jersey air traffic control. Search teams have found no sign of a wreckage or survivors.Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman said all at the club were “still praying” for positive news and revealed that the flight on the Piper Malibu plane, which experts described as “risky”, was not booked by the Premier League club.Mr Dalman said: “We spoke to the player and asked him if he wanted us to make arrangements for his flight which, quite frankly, would have been commercial. He declined and made his own arrangements.“I can’t tell you who arranged the flight because I don’t know at this stage – but it certainly wasn’t Cardiff City.”4

A Piper PA-46 Malibu plane like the one Sala travelled on

Dalman revealed that Cardiff manager Neil Warnock was “in a state of shock” after hearing the news, as his former club Nantes held a vigil in the heart of the city.He said: “Neil is human and he’s affected as much as we all are.“We need to get on and do the right things but at the moment there’s a vacuum of information – it’s very unsettling.“We’re still praying, we still have prayers and we’ve got to be doing that, we’ve got to make sure.“Especially for his father and mother who are so far away and with Nantes’ fans – that’s his fanbase.“Nantes is a big club and we’ve got to make sure we do the right thing by them and we need to be doing the right thing and keeping up communications to our own fans. We do have to keep them informed as to what information we get. “The reaction we’ve had and the reaction that I’ve seen from the football world and outside the football world has been really overwhelming.“I’ve had emails and text messages from right across the world from competitions to men who supported Cardiff or Nantes – it has been tremendous that the family of football has been able to come together.“I even had a text message from a prime minister of a country to wish us well. So the support we’re getting from the community, the football community, has been really overwhelming.“The football community, the football family is really quite caring at times like this.“Cardiff City will be involved with the investigation. We won’t leave a single stone unturned until we have all the facts.”4

Scarves and flowers are being laid outside Cardiff’s stadium

4

Nantes fans gathered in the city after the news about Sala emerged

Dalman added: “It’s a tragedy that I have never faced before. There was so much optimism in there and having a young man who had his career ahead of him go missing like that is a shock.“It has affected the club enormously. Our hearts go out to his family, especially those very far away. It’s a distressing time. We feel very saddened by it.”Aviation expert and former pilot Alastair Rosenschein has claimed Sala should not have been making the journey at that time of night in that type of aircraft.He said: “It’s very surprising that they should ask to descend at night over water in a single engine aircraft. It’s already a fairly risky crossing to do in a single engine aircraft, especially in winter and definitely at night. There are icing problems too.“Why he would have asked to descend one can only speculate, but one of the reasons to descend could have been to get out of an icing layer where ice forms on the wings or on the propeller so the aircraft descends to slightly warmer air.“The other reason could have been to remain clear of cloud but at night you’re not going to see anything anyway, so it really is unexplained at the moment.“It’s a strange thing to do though to go and fly over water with one engine at night in winter because if your engine goes you’re going in the water.”4

The aircraft went missing just off Alderney, which lies 10 miles from the western border of the Cotentin Peninsula

Mr Rosenschein told The Sun that the Piper Malibu plane that Sala was travelling in had a questionable safety record.He said: “When I looked it up it has had over 160 serious crashes that’s a fairly large number – 55 of them were fatal accidents that’s a large number for an aircraft that does not have such a large production number.“Since the year 2000 there have been 24 fatal crashes.“One can’t compare what we call general aviation or light aircraft flying with commercial flying which is extremely safe and accidents are very rare.“General aviation is flown primarily by amateurs. These will be people wealthy enough to buy an aircraft who generally don’t have a great deal experience or recency – although one doesn’t know the experience of the pilot involved.”Mr Rosenshein said there was little chance the plane would have been fitted with a black box or similar device to aid rescuers in the search for it.He said: “There are some private aircraft where they have this but it is an unlikely scenario. The important thing now is to continue with the search and rescue.“If they survived the ditching as we call it and got into a life raft then the chances of them being rescued remain reasonable but if they got into the water then at this time of the year the water is very cold and it’s not a survival situation.”Meanwhile, plans for a 70ft Sala banner at the Cardiff City Stadium have been drawn up.The banner will include the flags of both Wales and Argentina, and say: We never saw you play and never saw you score, but Emiliano our beautiful Bluebird we will love you forever more.

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