I’m not sure where this is going? I don’t think there is any suggestion of a Volunteer Pilot Organization flying around footballers.

Now that the Sala funeral is over, it seems that Cardiff City’s complaints are going to get louder. This has come from the Sun so comes with an automatic reality check but is supposedly a list of questions that have been sent in reply to the claim from Nantes Football Club.

1. Was Sala a Nantes player when he stepped on to the fatal flight?

2. Who arranged the flight and why did that person put him on a single-engine plane at night in difficult conditions, without adequate emergency apparatus?

3. Who took the decision to put Sala on the plane?

4. Why won’t the owner of the aircraft come forward?

5. Was the plane licenced to take commercial passengers?

6. Was pilot David Ibbotson in possession of a licence to carry passengers?

7. Was Sala third-party owned?

8. Are Sala’s previous club Bordeaux due 50 per cent of the transfer fee as part of a sell-on clause negotiated when he moved to Nantes in 2015?

9. What was transfer broker Willie McKay’s cut?

10. Was McKay’s commission, or part of the transfer fee, due to be split between other parties involved in the deal and, if so, to who?

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.’

Every time McKay speaks I just have more questions than answers. All the previous flights presumably were in the Eclipse. McKay is quite certain that he organised and paid for them. When it comes to the PA46, he asked Dave Henderson to ‘make all the necessary arrangements’. What does that mean? McKay says that he didn’t chose plane and pilot. In my experience, clients who regularly use air charter know the basics, prop or jet, one or two engines, one or two pilots. At some point somebody made a decision to use the PA46 after using the Eclipse for the previous flights. Wouldn’t McKay be annoyed by that? Wouldn’t the person who booked it know it wasn’t what he normally used? Suddenly McKay, although he didn’t chose the pilot, has become an expert on Dave Ibbotson’s qualifications. He uses the same form of words as the Ibbotson family, ‘he was licenced to carry passengers’. Well, yes he was in some other circumstances but not in this set of circumstances. Once again there is a cynical PR campaign going on.

McKay told Sala that Cardiff were paying for the flights, now he says that his son paid for the flights. To investigate this will be like trying to nail jelly to the wall.

Except for the PA46 which was ‘arranged’.

Looking at the wider picture surely it is time for the FAA and CAA to legislate and abolish the abuse of this N flag of convenience.

Clearly the reason many UK based light aircraft operate on the FAA register is to exploit the fact that it is cheaper and less regulated. Here is Asia there is a rule whereby foreign registered aircraft can only stay in the country for a limited period.

Regarding agent’s part in the tragedy he clearly has passed the buck.

I am not a legal expert but I imagine one of ‘ his regular pilots ‘ has played a significant part in all this.

One thing that was puzzling me was where Sala’s personal agent went because he didn’t leave on the PA46 to Nantes on the Saturday. It has been revealed today that he left on the Friday afternoon on yet another PA46, N14EF.

Altaclara Aviation Ltd.

Nature of business (SIC)

• 77351 - Renting and leasing of air passenger transport equipment

What a surprise! Yet another company that rents out an aircraft!

Only if this was claimed to be a cost sharing flight, which I don’t think it was.

it may well be an illegal charter, but the “common purpose” provision has nothing to do with that.

I did wonder if it was done by way of lease transferring operational control to McKay’s company for the duration of the flight and he then hired his own flight crew. However, he denied that with the first words out of his mouth when he said that he had no control over either aircraft or pilot. It may have come as a huge surprise to David Henderson when he discovered that he had been sacrificed.

Mike. I struggle to understand which aspect of this unfortunate affair has anything to do with the letter painted on the side of the aircraft. Perhaps you could clarify.

The CAA is required to have oversight of all flying occurring in the UK FIR regardless of the registry of the aircraft concerned. If there is an issue with questionable charters, the issue is a lack of oversight in general, unless you are suggesting that the CAA somehow watches G reg ops like a hawk and ignores the N reg ops.

There are, in my view, two reasons why there is a proliferation of N reg in Europe, neither (directly) associated with cost.

1. The FAA flight crew licensing regime has been rock steady whilst we in the Uk have watched a dogs dinner unfold as we’ve moved from CAA to JAA to EASA to whatever next.

2. The FAA has historically been far faster to approve new technologies, making the register far more attractive to those operating more advanced aircraft.

The accident rate on the N reg fleet globally is far better than the G reg fleet (so far as these things can be compared) and the FAA has not been slow to act when circumstances require.

In situations like this, it is easy to point at the registry and claim that it has something to do with the events concerned. Right now, I see no link. Tell me why I am wrong.