AIRCRAFT DEATH ADMISSION
LONDON: A flight operator has admitted a charge over the death of the footballer Emiliano Sala who was killed when a light aircraft crashed in the Channel.
David Henderson admitted that he was the operator when his aircraft took payment for Sala, 28, to fly “without permission or authorisation” from outside Britain.
Sala was on his way to Wales from his French football club Nantes to join Cardiff City in a $28m deal.
Henderson, 67, denies another charge of acting in a “reckless or negligent manner likely to endanger an aircraft” by recruiting a fellow pilot David Ibbotson, 59, to fly the single-engine Piper Malibu from France to Cardiff airport.
Ibbotson allegedly did not have a commercial licence and was “not competent” to fly in bad weather.