Quote from the Cardiff City Manager saying he wished the footballer hadn’t travelled to Nantes.
“I do keep thinking back, I said to him ‘why don’t you come up to Newcastle and watch us play tomorrow and have a look?’
“You’re now asking yourself should I have made him come up, because it’s after the event, but he wanted to go back and see his teammates, and family, and get his belongings for the following week so that’s what happened.
“I just thanked him and off we went, you know.”
A Premiership football club isn’t a corner shop. They have a duty of care to their employees. If they drove him from the airport to the training ground in a company car they should have checked the licence of the driver and given him a set of rules related to the use of the car. So how is aviation any different, how can you just absolve yourself of any responsibility? I know the club position is that they aren’t responsible because the player made his own arrangements. However all the parties involved had contractural relationships with each other. I have also read the argument that passengers don’t have enough knowledge to know when they are at risk. Well these are multi million pound organisations, so if you don’t have enough knowledge to know what a licensed air carrier is or don’t want to buy in that expertise, then send your employees by scheduled flight.