Two and a half years after the disappearance of Emiliano Sala and his pilot, David Ibboston, the trial began on Monday in Cardiff (Wales).
The operator of the plane, David Henderson, 67, is being sued in a Cardiff court for recklessness or negligence which may have endangered the device in which the 28-year-old was traveling.
Henderson favored the greed
Sala then joined the club Cardiff City, where he had just been transferred for 17 million euros. His plane crashed in the English Channel on January 21, 2019. David Henderson was originally supposed to pilot the device. But busy, he had arranged for David Ibbotson to take his place, knowing that the latter did not have a commercial pilot license, that his qualification for this type of aircraft had expired and that he was not competent to fly at night.
This Tuesday, the prosecution accused David Henderson of having favored the greed over safety by taking a pilot he knew was unqualified.
In an email, Fay Keely, the owner of the Piper Malibu, had asked Henderson to no longer use pilot David Ibbotson, 59, after two infractions reported by the British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
She subsequently discovered that David Henderson had nevertheless called on this pilot again in August 2018. On the day of the crash, “he had to (…) pilot himself”, she detailed.
“I then discovered that he was not available and that he had asked David Ibbotson to fly in his place (…) without my permission.
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