Owners of Sala’s plane identified to investigators

The mystery owners of the offshore-registered plane in which Cardiff striker Emiliano Sala died have been identified to investigators, it was claimed last night.

Southern Aircraft Consultancy, a British-based company which arranged the paperwork for the single-engine Piper Malibu plane, issued a statement to deny suggestions that information had been withheld from authorities.

Sala, whose body was recovered from plane wreckage last week, died from “head and trunk [torso] injuries”, an inquest heard yesterday. The pilot, David Ibbotson, is still missing, but his family said yesterday they would never give up hope of finding him. His daughter, Danielle, told Good Morning Britain: “If you’ve got hope then you shouldn’t give up.”

Cardiff are among a number of parties eager to establish who owns the aircraft as part of investigations to establish who is financially liable.

The club appear to be legally obliged to pay Nantes the record club fee of £15 million. Relations between the clubs has been soured by a legal demand for payment from Nantes. James Earl, a partner at Fladgate LLP, told the Telegraph yesterday: “There may well be no legal justification to avoid paying the first instalment.”

SAC has repeatedly refused to publicly name the owner of the plane, but clarified last night that the Air Accidents Investigations Branch had been informed. The AAIB is due to publish an interim report on the crash within a fortnight.

“By law, as with any other company who holds client details, we cannot simply release those details to anyone that asks for them,” a statement from SAC said. “We can only release them to those who have a legal right to them (for example, the AAIB, with whom we have been liaising regularly and to whom we provided all of the information that we hold on the aircraft and the owners immediately after being notified that it was missing).”

Sala’s body was taken by ship to Portland Port on Thursday where a coroner confirmed his identity with police assistance. The wreckage of the single-engined Piper Malibu N264DB was discovered on Sunday.