It's shocking that this flight took place in the form that it did. I also suspect more will come to light, but at the moment a non commercial flight was arranged and accepted. No definitions of competency or proper decision making were promised or made, but from what I see right now, nothing illegal happened. Stupid beyond comprehension I would say, but there are many aircraft owners willing to lend their aircraft and many low houred PPL's willing to fly for free. Too many non aviation people think aviation is straight forward, assume competency, experience and ability and underestimate risk.

That was my thinking. Once at 2300' the trip was effectively over.

I wonder if the pilot was thinking, if only I can get him to the mainland he can get a cab ...

Generally you would expect that.
It does seem based on some of his messages, that the aircraft was not exactly of the standard he expected.

Based on the parts of the conversation seen between Sala and McKay, no doubt McKay seems to be fairly flippant about this whole setup. However in my opinion he must bare some responsibility.
You would have expected a 5 star service, instead he got the Donkey service.

I worked in past with agents in the entertainment industry, and generally they do EVERYTHING for you, and you would not expect them to put you in such a high risk situation. In most Agent contracts, high risk situations would be breach of contract terms.

I am suspecting there was a certain pressure on D.I to complete the flight that night, the pressure is that the agent now must make sure Sala is in Cardiff by Tuesday, the question is how much pressure the pilot was made aware of by McKay, or whoever organised the flight.
D.I would be ill equipped / prepared to deal with such "COMMERCIAL PRESSURE" to get a 15 Mill footballer to Cardiff ON TIME.

Sala denied the commercial flight offer from Cardiff, it seems after McKay had promised him an alternative way to travel, from this moment all responsibility lies with McKay, the agent to make sure Sala is on time in Cardiff for his training report on Tuesday.

Truly a tragic story. Sala's last WhatsApp message really shows that this was not was he expected, he trusted McKay's offer of this flight, and and who knows what would have gone trough his mind regarding the consequences if he had refused to take the flight.
The Commercial Pressure was not only on the Pilot in this case, but also the the newly signed footballer.

Well it could have been worse, allegedly holding a basic PPL, no IR, no night rating, SEP over water into IMC at night with icing... flying ILS approaches (sans IR or even an IMC rating), according to (again alleged) social media postings.

Not prejudging here but I'd be pretty damned reluctant to make that trip if even half of the above were true,.

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.

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.

dont agree as you have just mentioned many are only learning about wingly.

I have probably done just that with friends of mine who are recently qualified.

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?

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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