LONDON: The owner of a plane that crashed with Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala on board told a UK court on Wednesday she had ordered the operator not to use the pilot.
The plane — a single-engined Piper Malibu — came down in the Channel in January 2019, killing the 28-year-old striker and the 59-year-old pilot David Ibbotson as they returned from France to Wales.
The plane’s operator, David Henderson, is standing trial at Cardiff Crown Court in Wales, accused of endangering the safety of the plane.
The plane’s owner, Fay Keely, said she bought the plane on Henderson’s advice and allowed him to operate it and choose pilots.
But she told the hearing that on July 6, 2018, six months before the fatal incident, she emailed the operator telling him not to use Ibbotson again.
She did this after the Civil Aviation Authority informed her of two infringements when he was piloting.
She later learnt that Henderson had nevertheless hired Ibbotson for a flight with her sister on board just a month later.
“He allowed that to happen without my permission,” she stressed.
Asked by the defense whether she had repeated her warning to Henderson not to use the pilot, she said: “No. As far as I was concerned I had made my feelings clear that he shouldn’t be flying the aircraft.”
Lawyer Martin Goudie, for the prosecution, told the court on Tuesday that Henderson was unavailable to pilot the return flight carrying Sala and arranged for Ibbotson to fly instead.
Henderson, from Hotham, in Yorkshire, northern England, has denied one charge of endangering the safety of an aircraft.
The court was told on Monday he had admitted one count of attempting to discharge a passenger without valid permission or authorization.
That charge typically concerns a business operator failing to acquire the appropriate licenses to hire a plane commercially.
Sala died on the return flight from France, which he had visited to collect his belongings and say goodbye to teammates at Nantes after signing with Cardiff for a record £15 million (18 million euros, $19 million).
British air accident investigators in March 2020 concluded that Ibbotson was not licensed to fly the plane or to fly at night, and that he lost control and flew too fast as he tried to avoid bad weather.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch said both the pilot and Sala were affected by carbon monoxide poisoning before the crash.
Owner of plane in Sala crash ‘forbade use of pilot’
https://arab.news/nzsh9
Owner of plane in Sala crash ‘forbade use of pilot’
- Fay Keely told the hearing that on July 6, 2018, six months before the fatal incident, she emailed David Henderson telling him not to use David Ibbotson again
- Investigators in March 2020 concluded that Ibbotson was not licensed to fly the plane or to fly at night, and that he lost control and flew too fast as he tried to avoid bad weather
NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February
- The 98-meter rocket began its 1.6 kph creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak
- The six-kilometer trek could take until nightfall
CAPE CANAVERAL, USA: NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.
The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek could take until nightfall.
Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.
Weighing in at 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms), the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.
The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.
“This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.
Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyzes and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.
They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.
NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date. Depending on how the demo goes, “that will ultimately lay out our path toward launch,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said on Friday.
The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.
