Plane may never be found

Plane carrying Cardiff City's £15m signing may never be found after it crashed into a 600ft-deep underwater valley - as it emerges that an iced-up instrument may have shown pilot the wrong altitude

By Martin Robinson Chief Reporter and Amie Gordon For Mailonline
08:47, 25 Jan 2019, updated 13:24, 25 Jan 2019

Pilot Dave Ibbotson held private licence but investigators will probe if he needed a commercial licence

Harbour master has said air and sea searches are over because 'chances of survival are extremely remote'

Plane may have plunged into one of Channel's most perilous areas, a 600ft sea valley known as Hurd’s Deep

Family of missing footballer Emiliano Sala are furious the hunt for him is over as his sister arrived in the UK

Sobbing sister Romina said: 'Please, please, don't stop the search. I know he's still alive. He'd never give up'

Experts believe the sudden disappearance may have been a crash caused by a buildup of ice on the wings

The pilot missing with Premier League footballer Emiliano Sala could have been misled by a piece of equipment which malfunctioned, sending his plane hurtling into the English Channel.

Part-time pilot Dave Ibbotson asked to drop from 5,000ft to 2,500ft before vanishing off the radar - and could have been sent into the sea after an instrument gave a false reading.

One of Britain’s leading aviation experts, Julian Bray, told MailOnline that if the wreckage is ever found investigators will try to work out if its instruments froze and failed in the Arctic blast currently in northern Europe.

The Piper Malibu carrying Sala from Nantes to Cardiff vanished over Alderney on Monday night and is feared to have plunged into one of the Channel's most perilous areas, known as Hurd’s Deep.

Today it also emerged that pilot Dave Ibbotson, 60, a father of four boiler engineer from Scunthorpe, touted for 'odd flying jobs' on Facebook and had four outstanding county court judgments, totalling £18,000, at the time of the crash.

The main reason Sala wanted to fly back to Nantes was to get his black Labrador Nala, it has been revealed.

A source close to the transfer told MailOnline: ‘Emiliano was desperate to fly back after signing to Cardiff to see Nala and make sure he was in Kennels ahead of moving him to Cardiff. They were inseparable’.

The 28-year-old footballer's family now plan to organise a private search for him, according to reports in Argentina, after the search was called off on Thursday.

Mr Bray said that a device called a ‘pitot tube’ on the outside of the aircraft is prone to problems in extreme cold, including giving false altitude readings.

He said: ‘Just before they vanished the pilot asked to drop from 5,00ft to 2,500ft, which is very unusual indeed.

'It is possible that he dropped down to try to thaw his instruments’.

Suggesting he could have crashed directly into the Channel in the dark he added: ‘I’m wondering if he was at a much lower level than he thought.

'The sensor may have frozen and gave a different height reading’.

The plane is feared to have sunk in Hurd's Deep - the 600ft deep underwater valley where British submarine HMS Affray sits on the seabed after sinking in 1951.


It lies next to tonnes of radioactive waste, chemical weapons and munitions dumped into its depths after both world wars.

MailOnline revealed yesterday the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) is investigating whether the flight chartered by the son of mega-agent Willie McKay was legal - because Mr Ibbotson was not licensed to carry paying passengers.

A friend told The Sun: 'I always thought he was a better plumber than he was a pilot. I think we knew he did the odd bit of flying on the side to earn a bit of crust — but nothing as big as the France job.'

Officials at Nantes-Atlantique airport have insisted that David Henderson, a highly experienced pilot in his 60s, was set to take the controls of the Piper PA-46 Malibu on Monday night - but it appears Mr Ibbotson stepped in at the 11th hour.

Mr Ibbotson flew Sala, 28, to Wales, where he had been due to take part in his first training sessions with his new club.

Mr Henderson posted a message on Facebook on Tuesday night reading: ‘Contrary to press reports, I am not dead!!!’ He then deleted the account and declined interviews.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6631063/Debt-ridden-Emiliano-Sala-pilot-touting-work-Facebook-hired-11th-hour.html

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The Piper Malibu carrying Sala from Nantes to Cardiff vanished over Alderney on Monday night and is feared to have plunged into one of the Channel's most perilous areas, known as Hurd’s Deep

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odds on it finding that exact spot?


plus 600ft doesnt seem all that deep, surely something can check that out?

odds on it finding that exact spot?


plus 600ft doesnt seem all that deep, surely something can check that out?

I’m pretty sure there’s a submarine shipping route around that same area

odds on it finding that exact spot?


plus 600ft doesnt seem all that deep, surely something can check that out?

Yeah it's deep. 130 feet is the general limit for average divers in good conditions. You can go deeper with specialist equipment and experts who are prepared to take the risk but that's below the depth of light penetration and even with lighting you could see bugger all two feet away, including hazards. Some guy dived to 1000 feet and set a world record but that was in perfect conditions in the Red Sea, and it took him 14 hours to get back up ,changing tanks ten times under water on the way.

In those waters and with the nuclear waste ,shipwrecks ,abandoned munitions ,predators ,cold and shifting tides and currents plus the impossibility of staying connected to your safety boat , you'd have to be insane. Even if you did, the chances of finding anything would be infinitesimally small .

The US Navy and some multinationals have unmanned mini subs which could get down there but again ,without exact coordinates, they'd be unlikely to locate it and I doubt whether they'd be induced to deploy them .

( sorry for knowing some stuff, I know that upsets you ).

odds on it finding that exact spot?


plus 600ft doesnt seem all that deep, surely something can check that out?

Yeah it's deep. 130 feet is the general limit for average divers in good conditions. You can go deeper with specialist equipment and experts who are prepared to take the risk but that's below the depth of light penetration and even with lighting you could see bugger all two feet away, including hazards. Some guy dived to 1000 feet and set a world record but that was in perfect conditions in the Red Sea, and it took him 14 hours to get back up ,changing tanks ten times under water on the way.

In those waters and with the nuclear waste ,shipwrecks ,abandoned munitions ,predators ,cold and shifting tides and currents plus the impossibility of staying connected to your safety boat , you'd have to be insane. Even if you did, the chances of finding anything would be infinitesimally small .

The US Navy and some multinationals have unmanned mini subs which could get down there but again ,without exact coordinates, they'd be unlikely to locate it and I doubt whether they'd be induced to deploy them .

( sorry for knowing some stuff, I know that upsets you ).

Will just use sona but as say with so much debris hanging around it would be extremely difficult to pick up something that could be in pieces 600ft down

Exactly Alan. There's so much junk down there you wouldn't know which metallic objects to investigate further. It's heartbreaking of course, but unfortunately I think that's the realistic position.

Exactly Alan. There's so much junk down there you wouldn't know which metallic objects to investigate further. It's heartbreaking of course, but unfortunately I think that's the realistic position.

Sounds easy on the face of it, just send someone down for a look. However, I have a mate who is into sub aqua diving, and his club tend to dive off the coast of West Wales down to known wrecks. He has told me in the past that more often than not, you can barely see more than a couple of feet in front of you, apart from the odd days where weather and tide conditions are prefect.

Exactly Alan. There's so much junk down there you wouldn't know which metallic objects to investigate further. It's heartbreaking of course, but unfortunately I think that's the realistic position.

Searching for a large object using sona isn't easy suggest if go looking for this plane won't bring any joy! Suspect they may do a brief look in hope of
finding it but suspect cost will prevent long search

Yes you're right, but it's not even the cost . Sonar will only tell you there's an object and maybe a rough shape if it's big enough. Might be a part off the 100s of shipwrecks going back to Roman times , abandoned machinery or just a rock. There'd be so many that you could hardly begin to investigate then with other equipment . It'd be like tossing a cigarette lighter into a public landfill site then trying to find it with your hands in total darkness , and there's so much ordnance down there as well as French nuclear waste it'd be very high risk.

These are very hard realities I know, but I honestly think it's lost and only some very unlikely circumstance, beyond human control could cause it to turn up.

Heard on the radio, the English channel is roughly 40-60 meters deep, however where the plane was perceived to have crashed, the channel has a ridge which drops to 120-140 meters deep.

Heard on the radio, the English channel is roughly 40-60 meters deep, however where the plane was perceived to have crashed, the channel has a ridge which drops to 120-140 meters deep.

Yeah it's a trench and it's been used by French to dump nuclear waste before they decided that wasn't the safest thing to do with it, plus thousands of tonnes on military hardware and ordnance after ww2. It's been known as a dangerous area since the ancient Romans and it's also full of wrecks from that time on. It's not a place you can go in short and if it's true that the rescuers were on site within 30 minutes and there was no debris, then I afraid the most likely thing is that the whole aeroplane went straight to the bottom , which often happens unfortunately .