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Cardiff City Footballer Feared Missing after aircraft disappeared near Channel Island

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Cardiff City Footballer Feared Missing after aircraft disappeared near Channel Island

Old 26th Jan 2019, 19:21
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Originally Posted by Arkroyal
And you think that Sala was in a position to make an informed and risk assessed decision on the basis of ‘My dad can fix that’?
whoever in the club allowed him to make that decision will by now be regretting the can of worms he’s opened and the cost to the club.
he made the same decision that lots of people who fly in GA aeroplanes make all the time at flying schools. it was his decision to make.

Originally Posted by Arkroyal
As for your comments about Wingly, it’s well understood here and by anyone reading the thread that no one has linked this fiasco with Wingly.
Many of us have only learnt about Wingly through this thread and, like me, are aghast that this is allowed. It’s connection to the flight we are discussing is the use of under qualified ‘pilots’ for what are thinly disguised commercial operations.
dont agree as you have just mentioned many are only learning about wingly.

Originally Posted by Arkroyal
If you’d entrust your loved ones to a night flip around town with a bloke whose last 12 months experience is 12 hours then you carry on mate. I certainly wouldn’t
I have probably done just that with friends of mine who are recently qualified.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 19:22
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I have in past been very critical with Wingly, and I have on multiple occasions challenged them, and they have NEVER provided me satisfactory answers.

From my PPL days, when I was young and green, I recall taking friends out for a flight in a PA28 or C-172, we were all 18, young and probably thought we could not make mistakes. In hindsight I think to myself, that was a stupid thing to do.
I would NEVER book a Wingly flight to any of my loved ones, as I can make an informed decision based on my own knowledge and experience, people with no aviation background can't understand this and the dangers involved.
And they might buy their loved one an "experience flight" - but they are not aware what experience means in aviation terms, if there is proper maintenance to the aircraft, I been visiting few airfields where they have light aircraft to rent out, and there is NO WAY I would go flying in some of those aircraft. Full of oil streaks along the cowling, speed tape on the wings, loose/broken bits around on different parts of the aircraft, thanks, but no thanks.

Equally I know the desperation of some newbie pilots to fly art ANY COST, so yes Wingly might not have been involved in this accident, but they are an accident waiting to happen, the question is, do we ALWAYS need to learn our lessons with blood AFTER innocent people have died?
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 19:32
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Originally Posted by artschool
he made the same decision that lots of people who fly in GA aeroplanes make all the time at flying schools. it was his decision to make.
No he wasn't in that position. As far as we know Sala had NO INTEREST in GA or airplanes, he was not looking for a a flying lesson or some flight experience. He had NO interest in aviation. He was going to Cardiff to start work there on Tuesday, he would NEVER have taken this flight if it was not for this.

He had a flight organised by his agent McKay, who he trusted would arrange a safe commercial transport from France to Cardiff.

Just because Sala did NOT pay, does not mean it was not a Commercial Flight. McKay is offering his latest client a "free flight" - these kind of perks are often assumed or written in contracts with agents.
Somebody must have paid someone, I doubt they would be flying the aircraft around just for the fun of it. Would be some coincidence if it just fitted McKay's and Sala's schedule!
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 19:37
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Originally Posted by ve3id
Let me try to make it simple:
1) A big piece of metal such as an aeroplane may fall out of the sky and kill you if things go wrong.
2) This has happened before and every time it happens there is a comprehensive analysis to try and prevent its recurrence.
3) When it does happen, rules and procedures are put in place to prevent it happening again. Sometimes nobody could have guessed the cause before it happened.
4) Professional pilots know these rules and procedures. The more complicated the aeroplane, the higher level of skill required.
5) The worse the weather, the higher level of skills and experience required.
6) If a pilot ignores 4 and 5 together, they may not have enough experience to even guess at what could go wrong, let alone prepare to mitigate the risk. 'Best guesses' are of no value whatsover unless you have the experience to be able to make them.
And EUTYCHUS pro pilots are on this thread making it known, at the same time as trying to make a living, and sharing our experience with pilots who want to learn as well as paying huge fees to our regulator to ensure we're doing it right, while the regulator (who is paid to fight on our behalf) and us have our throats cut by a politician's pet plan. And if I seem angry I f***ing well am! 30 years, 17000 hours, regulated until I struggle to breathe sometimes, and a gas fitter with a poor reputation kills someone due to Christ knows what. From what I do know, I would have been protected by legislation and my employer on this trip as well as experience that can't be bought. Ibbotson had no chance, I'm actually sorry for him and his family because I can imagine the pressure he was under, now his failings are exposed here in the court of PPRUNE for all to see. From past experience I can imagine the words threatening him if he didn't get Sala to Cardiff that night, ShyTorque and I both know the situation only too well, but we've been around long enough to tell the client to politely get lost. I've told customers that I'm not paid enough to die for them, they're still customers, and I'm still alive.

Foul little deals like this have gone on for years, and now they've been truly shown up maybe we can start digging the real cowboys out (and they're on an airfield near you every day) and run the bastards out of town.

SND
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 19:46
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Originally Posted by Sir Niall Dementia
And ignorance is no defence in law.

SND

With the owner of Cardiff City being one of the richest men in malaysia, exoect this to go to litigation.
He also does not like npbeing crossed, for non football persons just look up Malky Mackey and texts.
He us still chasing this through the courts 4 years later.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:03
  #606 (permalink)  
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Artschool-what 2unlimited said! Thanks 2 for putting it so well.

SND I can well understand your anger. To watch your business being taken by these cowboys must be bloody galling! In my experience I was only involved in one helicopter flight with corporate passengers. I made it quite clear that they were not going to get where they wanted to go. The abuse and pressure was insulting in the extreme. Never again.

Last edited by Arkroyal; 26th Jan 2019 at 20:58.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:12
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Originally Posted by Gurnard
You're not the only one to feel angry or upset. Others are - but there's no need to resort to foul and blasphemous language of the kind. It lowers the tone of the debate.
An innocent young mans life was lost needlessly, because of a Penny pinching agent McKay.
I truly hope he gets sued by both Cardiff and the young mans family.

I think the way this story is unfolding it makes many upset.

I fear the CAA are so overworked and depleted on resources that they don't even have the capacity to do what is needed to do.
Wingly is offered as a "taxi" service, so that is well beyond the scope of a PPL pilot.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:16
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So
Lets compare professions:
Pilots and Doctors
This poor footballer was in for some minor surgery, expecting a Surgeon.?
He got a pipe fitter with a dull knife.
Tragic
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:30
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ArtSchool

As others have kindly pointed out on my behalf, I only made a comment because I genuinely had never heard of Wingly and having had a look at the website I was equally surprised at what I saw there. I made no suggestion that Wingly had anything whatsoever to do with this tragic accident the circumstances of which look ever more difficult for the investigating authorites.

Beamer
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:52
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To me there are 3 questions coming out of this sad saga:
1. What happened" technically" during the flight. Why was the flight at 5,000 feet in known icing conditions. Why no attempt to immediately climb when they hit the ice, the technical state of the plane, the competence of the piloting person
2. The legality of the flight. For reward or not? The duty of care of plane owner and pilot as well as the broker
3. The state of the legislation. With varying licensing of planes (G vs N), differing legal requirements for pilots, etc. There must be over 100 posts here, many of pilots who are utterly confused about what is legal and what is not in which case and why, with sometime irritations from others who subsequently also get rebuked. The tree in the woods? Just like the economy, aviation is a global enterprise but legislation is still country defined and it has become a patchwork to feed the lawyers as well as potentially a trap for plane owners and pilots. What is needed is unification of the rules and regulations. Where GA is relatively straightforward in the USA, it is far more complicated in Europe. Perhaps we should start comparing safety under ESSA rules vs FAA rules and pick the best version. I live in dreamland, I know...
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 20:55
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The Telegraph 1632 26 Jan:

‘Willie McKay has said his family had been victimised after he was wrongly named as the owner of the plane. "We’ve gone through hell," he told The Telegraph. "Internet... People talking about my sons and everything.” He added: "We just tried to help the young guy. That’s all we did. Okay?"

McKay’s son, Mark, was the acting agent for Nantes in a move which made 28-year-old Sala a club-record transfer for Cardiff. Jack, signed for the club last year, exchanged a series of text messages with Sala, suggesting a private flight from Cardiff to Nantes, and then back to south Wales two days later.’

Poor Willie!

Some Favour!

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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:04
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I'm not a pilot but I'm a risk management enthusiast and skeptic. Thank you all for the interesting read. Truly unfortunate the scenario Sala ended up in.

I think one problem is that most people are taught to ignore aviation risk. Low probability = silly and impossible. But on the contrary you are rolling a dice every time you fly and must be prepared to face the consequences of your decisions.

Also here in the US it seems like somebody can drop out of college, go to flight school for a couple years and then fly their own foreign students on their own. Regional flights don't come too long after that.

Again truly sad that literally everything went wrong. But reading this discussion makes me impressed how many options you guys have to potentially make it out of this scenario such as higher altitude, immersion suits, and communicating with controllers to make sure search and rescue knows exactly where you go down. That makes me a bit less nervous but I still always wanna fly commercial.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:14
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Originally Posted by vanHorck
To me there are 3 questions coming out of this sad saga:
1. What happened" technically" during the flight. Why was the flight at 5,000 feet in known icing conditions. Why no attempt to immediately climb when they hit the ice, the technical state of the plane, the competence of the piloting person
I flew one for a while about 15 years ago (for an owner) when I was flying anything that paid after a period out of flying. The aircraft was cleared into known icing and had boots, heated screen etc. At least one crashed in the USA after a pilot forgot the pitot heater and flew into icing. The auto-pilot dropped out due to lack of information, the pilot was suddenly hand flying on limited panel and it was rapidly down hill from there. An airline pilot heard his calls on the radio and suggested pitot heating, which according to the POH should have been on all the time.

One thing I disliked intensely was that Piper recommended not pulling the power back to descend to save "shock cooling" Instead they recommended pitching over, leaving the power at cruise setting and coming down at high speed, using airbrakes to manage speed control. I found on the one I flew that even with airbrakes just pitching over allowed the speed to rapidly go to the top of the yellow arc. This was often at the worst time as you descended into the weather you had been above, where there would be more turbulence, and gusty conditions making a grip on the top of the yellow arc quite tenuous.

In this case the descent seems to me to be daft. If the de-icing kit all tested on the ground any halfway competent IFR pilot would have climbed. Colder air, less chance for ice to accrete and what you've already got tends to break away, less surface lumps to hit and in the PA46 no speed control worries, if he even knew what the POH said about speed control in the first place. All stuff a pro would have known, and an amateur either learns by painful experience or sponging information from the pros who still like to fly fun aeroplanes in their free time.

SND
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:18
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This thread has concerned me. I've looked at the shareoplane insurance cover and I dread to think of what would happen if I 'damaged' a high-value passenger, not that I fly them very often.

Still, if I'm on board, it might not be my problem...
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:22
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Preventive measures; ¿ real or imaginary ?

Originally Posted by ve3id
Let me try to make it simple:
1) A big piece of metal such as an aeroplane may fall out of the sky and kill you if things go wrong.
2) This has happened before and every time it happens there is a comprehensive analysis to try and prevent its recurrence.
3) When it does happen, rules and procedures are put in place to prevent it happening again. Sometimes nobody could have guessed the cause before it happened.
.........
Would you say that the Cork Accident followed the above trope?

It hardly needs stating, but just to avoid ambiguity, I don't think it does.

As I understand it, the Cork accident resulted in a very thorough, professional and extremely long drawn out enquiry with a host of recommendations which I posted many many pages back.

Followed by........

SILENCE


That's how I see it, at least.

But I am only a simple passenger, I have no knowledge of this industry other than what I read online and I would genuinely be delighted to hear that I am wrong in my assertions.

Not least as they apply to the supervisory authority in the state where I reside.

"If you think the CAA is pretty poor...."
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:24
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Willy McKay has BY HIS OWN CONFESSION been using illegal public transport to move unsuspecting footballers around and has been doing it for years and there are people on these boards who have been aware of it. So let’s not fall for the very clever, calculating, cynical PR campaign to portray him as the victim.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:25
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Originally Posted by ve3id
Let me try to make it simple:
1) A big piece of metal such as an aeroplane may fall out of the sky and kill you if things go wrong.
True. The risk assessment part of this is about making a well-informed judgement about whether that risk is worth taking. Being a generally risk-averse person I think about that kind of thing even when I fly commercial.

Personally, having thought about it, and having read this thread, in terms of acceptable risk I think I personally would still be willing to fly passenger on an SEP flight to the CI from France (a lot less water than from the UK) - in VMC and by day - if I was confident that the pilot was experienced with - and confident in - their aircraft and familiar with the locality.

What makes me uneasier is the apparent ease with which the impression can be given that doing so in exchange for payment is legal and insured when it very possibly is neither, all the more so if the flight is taking place for business purposes.

I think that apart from ethical issues, this makes me uneasy because what has been described as "commercial pressure" can really skew the pilot's risk assessment, especially of weather, and as a passenger I could be both a perpetrator and a victim in that. In one of the flights I mentioned I saw this in action and realise, after the fact, that I contributed to it. The thing that would most discourage me from flying that way again is the potential distortion caused by this "commercial pressure" in a neither-fish-nor-fowl situation where the pilot is neither a trusted friend nor a detached professional.

Also, while it is clearly madness to attempt to fly IFR if one is only qualified for VFR, it seems to me that qualifications alone do not a good pilot make. At least that's the impression I get from those on the commercial aviation boards talking about "children of the magenta line"...

For me this issue is really complicated because there are several interlinked but different questions - regulation, experience, pilot ability, business practices...

Originally Posted by Sir Niall Dementia
And EUTYCHUS pro pilots are on this thread making it known, at the same time as trying to make a living, and sharing our experience with pilots who want to learn as well as paying huge fees to our regulator to ensure we're doing it right, while the regulator (who is paid to fight on our behalf) and us have our throats cut by a politician's pet plan. And if I seem angry I f***ing well am! 30 years, 17000 hours, regulated until I struggle to breathe sometimes, and a gas fitter with a poor reputation kills someone due to Christ knows what. From what I do know, I would have been protected by legislation and my employer on this trip as well as experience that can't be bought.
You make a good point, which many people don't often see I think, that legislation is ideally intended to protect us. I understand your frustration. However, while you and others are "making it known" on this thread, and I for one have learned a lot reading you (which is why I come here), it is unfortunately not realistic to expect yer average potential grey charter customer to come looking here. Time will tell whether this accident will result in any tightening of the rules or changes in popular perspective; it has certainly changed mine.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:37
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Originally Posted by Arkroyal
The Telegraph 1632 26 Jan:

‘Willie McKay has said his family had been victimised after he was wrongly named as the owner of the plane. "We’ve gone through hell," he told The Telegraph. "Internet... People talking about my sons and everything.” He added: "We just tried to help the young guy. That’s all we did. Okay?"

McKay’s son, Mark, was the acting agent for Nantes in a move which made 28-year-old Sala a club-record transfer for Cardiff. Jack, signed for the club last year, exchanged a series of text messages with Sala, suggesting a private flight from Cardiff to Nantes, and then back to south Wales two days later.’

Poor Willie!

Some Favour!

Yes poor Willie,
Just tried to help a young guy, a 15.000.000 transfer, probably at least made 10% of that, so £1.500.000 - and you give the guy a Donkey to start with the new job, sorry no sympathy for McKay in this, I hope they get sued for all they have. Sure money will not bring the lives lost, but for some people money is the only thing that can teach them a lesson.

Would be interesting to see the communication between McKay, the operator and the pilot. Somehow I would not be surprised if some of this information is never found, deleted by mistake I would guess.

McKay sentenced the boy to death, by hiring a cowboy operator.
Anyone questioning if this was a commercial flight, need to see what was the premises for this flight. Sala was a commercial commodity, that needed to be transported from France to Cardiff, if it was something else Cardiff FC had ordered from France example a special light set for the stadium, it would have been a commercial flight as it was transporting Cargo. This commodity was a living human being, he was not flying for any other reason than commercial reasons.

Sure we can speculate why this accident happen, that is important, but we lack information to know enough. However the fact is that the flight should NEVER have taken place anyway, at least not with Sala onboard.
Would the pilot D.I have been in Nantes if Sala was not going to Cardiff? If the answer is No, than this just confirms this was a commercial operation, which the pilot was NOT qualified to operate.

The flight plan that was filed, was that an IFR flight plan? The initial one and the final one? Is this information available somewhere?
It's also interesting that the photo of Sala's luggage is omitted in the publicized edited text messages.

No doubt based on the Whats App message, Sala was not a happy man, when he was going onboard the airplane. McKay's job was to protect him against this kind of situations, instead he sent him into his death by doing this "favor" - sorry NO sympathy for McKay in this case.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:39
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Surely Nantes FC should use the transfer money to continue the search for Sala... it's only right.
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Old 26th Jan 2019, 21:48
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Originally Posted by Contact Approach
Surely Nantes FC should use the transfer money to continue the search for Sala... it's only right.
I wonder if McKay still get their commission? They could also add a little of their at least 10% commission.


"The football agent Willie McKay arranged for the flight to take Emiliano Sala from Nantes to Cardiff but claims he had no involvement in selecting the plane or pilot,"

As McKay has confirmed they have done the same on many previous occasions, it would be interesting to know what other aircraft they have been using in the past.
The lies of McKay can pretty quickly unravel, if he is trying to suggest that he is massively surprised with the choice of aircraft and pilot, as it seems to contradict previous statements. But should be easy to find records of previous used aircraft and pilots in the past.
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