PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Cardiff City Footballer Feared Missing after aircraft disappeared near Channel Island
Old 18th Feb 2019, 17:41
  #1391 (permalink)  
runway30
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Cardiff
Posts: 615
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Excerpts from an interview McKay has had with the Daily Telegraph.

‘McKay confirmed, too, that he had spoken to the Air Accidents Investigations Branch about Sala’s fatal journey on Jan 21 and had produced a timeline of all previous private-jet trips arranged as part of the transfer.

This timeline, which he shared with Telegraph Sport, shows his son had organised and paid for two earlier flights to Nantes for Cardiff manager Neil Warnock to watch the striker and two between the cities for the player himself, the first for contract talks and the second for his medical.

McKay said: “The only flight everybody is talking about is the one that crashed, right? Cardiff knew everything [about every flight]. When are they going to come out and tell the truth?”

McKay confirmed none of the four previous journeys used the same Piper Malibu plane or pilot, who was drafted in to take Sala back to Nantes to say his farewells before returning him to the Welsh capital.


The Scot has repeatedly stressed he neither owns the doomed plane nor had any input into the selection of it or the pilot, Dave Ibbotson. Instead, he says, he simply asked one of his regular pilots, Dave Henderson, to make all the necessary arrangements.

He claimed on Monday he still not to know who owned the plane or whether Ibbotson – who had £23,400 in County Court Judgments against him – was licensed to make a commercial flight or had been paid anything more than expenses.

McKay said he routinely funded the flights and hotels of players he was contracted to sell – and even managers he was trying to sell them to – listing the practice among “gambles” he took in the hope of securing a lucrative payday.’

‘Meanwhile, the AAIB confirmed on Monday its interim report into Sala’s plane crash would not be ready this week but that a publication date could be confirmed by Friday.’
runway30 is offline