Light aircraft disappears with two people on board...

[ApOrbital]

Have they got the pilot out yet ?

[Eric Mc]

ApOrbital said:

Have they got the pilot out yet ?

He hasn't been found as far as I'm aware.

[ABZ RS6]

Pilot not qualified to fly at night.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47749265

[sparks_E46]

Eric Mc said:

ApOrbital said:

Have they got the pilot out yet ?

He hasn't been found as far as I'm aware.

Won’t be anything to find now surely?

[ApOrbital]

Nope crabs would have had him now

[BlackLabel]

ABZ RS6 said:

Pilot not qualified to fly at night.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47749265

What a mess, and completely avoidable perhaps?

beeb said:

David Ibbotson is thought to have been colour-blind, and his licence restricted him to flying in daytime hours only.

beeb said:

Flight plans seen by BBC Wales indicate the flight scheduled to take Argentine player Sala for his first training session with Cardiff City had been due to leave Nantes airport at 09:00 local time on 21 January.
But the flight was postponed until 19:00, at the request of Sala, to allow him to spend the day saying goodbye to his Nantes teammates.
By the time Mr Ibbotson taxied a Piper Malibu plane on to the runway ready for take-off shortly after 19:00, it would have been around an hour and 10 minutes since sunset

[ecsrobin]

BlackLabel said:

What a mess, and completely avoidable perhaps?

Yep. The errors started before the flight even got airborne.

[Guvernator]

So bizarre, why when requested to delay the flight till the evening would the pilot not have told Sala he isn't qualified to fly at night so they'd either have to leave at the scheduled time or he'd have to make other arrangements?

[funinhounslow]

Guvernator said:

So bizarre, why when requested to delay the flight till the evening would the pilot not have told Sala he isn't qualified to fly at night so they'd either have to leave at the scheduled time or he'd have to make other arrangements?

He should have told him that anyway if the flight was on a cost share basis - the pilot calls the shots not the passenger.

[ecsrobin]

Guvernator said:

So bizarre, why when requested to delay the flight till the evening would the pilot not have told Sala he isn't qualified to fly at night so they'd either have to leave at the scheduled time or he'd have to make other arrangements?

Because when someone’s paying you (which I’d suggest the pilot wasn’t covering the costs of this flight) your focus may shift on what’s right vs what’s in your pocket afterwards.

[Zeek]

64-year-old man from North Yorkshire arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-48694561

[skwdenyer]

Zeek said:

64-year-old man from North Yorkshire arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-48694561

Be interesting to see who this turns out to be. David Henderson was said to be aged 60 and from York.

[tescorank]

skwdenyer said:

Be interesting to see who this turns out to be. David Henderson was said to be aged 60 and from York.

David Henderson had arranged for a fellow pilot to take Emiliano Sala on a return trip from France. He is suspected of manslaughter.

[GloverMart]

skwdenyer said:

Zeek said:

64-year-old man from North Yorkshire arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-48694561

Be interesting to see who this turns out to be. David Henderson was said to be aged 60 and from York.

I don't think it's Willie McKay either, as he is only 60 too.

[BlackLabel]

The media, well the tabloids, are stating that it’s David Henderson.

[anonymous-user]

Interesting piece about David Henderson and his work as a "ferry pilot"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-34492176/my...

[Guvernator]

I don't get it, why is he being suspected of manslaughter? If I arranged for a mate to give one of my other mates a lift and they died in a car accident, would I be held responsible? I don't get the reasoning here.

[anonymous-user]

Guvernator said:

I don't get it, why is he being suspected of manslaughter? If I arranged for a mate to give one of my other mates a lift and they died in a car accident, would I be held responsible? I don't get the reasoning here.

There is a different level of responsibility in a commercial arrangement
If you knew the car was defective or that the driver was unlicenced then you would.

[Guvernator]

desolate said:

There is a different level of responsibility in a commercial arrangement
If you knew the car was defective or that the driver was unlicenced then you would.

Fair enough except I didn't think it had been established that it was a commercial arrangement. I thought the pilot wasn't allowed to carry paying passengers, officially at any rate.

Also can it be proven that Henderson definitely knew the plane was defective or that the pilot didn't have the correct rating?

I just think a lot of it would be pretty difficult to prove and a decent lawyer would have a field day so a bit weird that he was held on suspicion.

[Dr Jekyll]

Guvernator said:

Fair enough except I didn't think it had been established that it was a commercial arrangement. I thought the pilot wasn't allowed to carry paying passengers, officially at any rate.

Also can it be proven that Henderson definitely knew the plane was defective or that the pilot didn't have the correct rating?

I just think a lot of it would be pretty difficult to prove and a decent lawyer would have a field day so a bit weird that he was held on suspicion.

The pilot wasn't qualified to fly for payment, although it's debateable whether this led to the accident. Flying into bad weather when he was neither experienced in, nor qualified to, was almost certainly a factor but that was the pilot's decision.


The defectiveness of the aircraft appears to have been the deicing gear, I'm not sure whether that made it legally defective.