New pictures emerge of Sala plane wreckage as investigation continues

This picture shows the cockpit of the plane that carried Emiliano Sala
AAIB
Asher McShane|Megan White25 February 2019

This is the first picture of the cockpit of the plane which crashed in the English channel with Cardiff City striker Emiliano Sala on board.

Sala, 28 and pilot David Ibbotson, 59, died in the crash when their Piper Malibu plane went down over the English Channel on January 21.

The Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB) today released new images of the wreckage of the plane and said they were working to establish the exact circumstances of what caused the plane to crash into the sea.

In an interim report, the AAIB said the plane’s last radio contact was with Jersey radar at 8.12pm, before it took a rapid, steep decline of 7,000ft per minute towards the sea.

When discovered on the sea bed, the body of aircraft was in three parts, held together by electrical cables.

The plane's shattered cabin and fuselage
AAIB

The engine had disconnected from the cockpit, and the back of the plane had broken away from the front near the back of the wing.

The outboard section of both wings, tail plane and fin were missing.

Mr Sala's body was recovered in the wreckage on February 6 but investigators said there was no evidence of Mr Ibbotson's body found in or near the crash site.

The pilot used a flight planning and navigation app installed on a tablet computer to create a route between Nantes and Cardiff and file the VFR flight plan, which was uploaded to a cloud account, investigators said.

The remains of the plane's inner wing on the bottom of the English Channel
AAIB

During flight, the computer displays the aircraft position and planned route overlaid on a moving map, and records GPS-derived position information.

However, the computer was not found within the wreckage.

The report said: “In the days following the accident two seat cushions, an arm rest and possible skin from the fuselage washed up along the coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, France.

"A seat cushion also washed up in Bonne Nuit Bay on the north coast of Jersey.”

Mr Ibbotson held the correct private pilot’s licence, but not a commercial one. The AAIB said the main record of Mr Ibbotson's licence is a physical object now deemed lost at sea.

Tributes: footballer Emiliano Sala

The plane’s last radio contact was with the Jersey radar at 8.12pm, with the plane's rapid descent tracked four minutes later.

Died in crash: pilot David Ibbotson
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The wreckage was found 30 metres from the last secondary radar point recorded.

The report added: “The radar data provided an almost complete record of the accident flight, starting as the aircraft took off and ending shortly before it struck the sea.”

It also stated that the freezing level around the Channel Islands on the night of the accident was between 3,000 and 4,000ft, but the plane was equipped with an ice protection system that allowed it to fly into known icing conditions.

The AAIB said it will now work to “understand the last few minutes of the flight, assess the possible implications of the weather, analyse video to determine the aircraft attitude as it entered the water and consider regulatory requirements surrounding the flight including airworthiness requirements, aircraft permissions and flight crew licencing.”

Mr Ibbotson's family hope a fresh search for his body will begin this week after setting up an online fundraising campaign which has reached £250,000.

The aircraft remains underwater off the coast of Guernsey after an attempt to recover it was hampered by bad weather.

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