A man has pleaded guilty to a charge relating to the flight in which the Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala died.
David Henderson admitted to have attempted to discharge a passenger without valid permission or authorisation. He was the operator when his plane accepted payment for Sala to board as a passenger, which no one is not supposed to do outside Britain.
He has denied another charge of recruiting pilot Dave Ibbotson to fly the aircraft as a last-minute stand by when the original candidate became unavailable.
Henderson is about to stand trial at Cardiff Crown Court. He is accused of endangering the safety of an aircraft. The case has been brought by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and will be heard by a jury of seven men and five women selected only after confirming to the presiding judge that they were not Cardiff City supporters, the club Sala was about to join when the fateful accident occurred.
A jury inquest into the crash itself has been postponed until February 2022, after Henderson’s trial has been concluded.
In January 2019, Sala joined Cardiff from French club Nantes. After completing his medical in Wales, he travelled back to France to put his affairs in order. He then took a single-engine Piper Malibu plane piloted by Ibbotson back to Wales.
The plane disappeared over the Channels Islands without a trace in severe weather. An extensive sea, air and land search was mounted. After three weeks, the wreckage was found on the sea bed, and the body of Sala recovered. Ibbotson’s corpse has never been found.
It subsequently transpired that Ibbotson was not licensed to fly that particularly plane or at night, and did not have the necessary accreditation to take commercial passengers.
The case sparked bitter row between Cardiff and Nantes as to who was responsible for organising the flight in the first place.
Sala’s family has promised to take separate legal action against those responsible, once the British judicial process has run its course.
Earlier this year, a football competition was created in France called the Challenge Emiliano Sala in his honour. Featuring four of his previous clubs, it was won by Bordeaux.