St Peter Port (Guernsey) (AFP) – Hopes all but vanished of finding new Cardiff City striker Emiliano Sala alive as British, French and Channel Islands rescuers on Wednesday suspended a second day of searches after the plane he was flying in disappeared at sea.
The Argentine footballer had sent relatives a desperate message shortly before taking off saying the plane looked like it was “going to fall apart”.
Objects have been found in the water, and police on the British island of Guernsey, which sits off the north coast of France, warned there was little chance of finding him.
“A decision about whether to recommence will be taken early Thursday morning,” police said in a statement.
“The water is very cold at the moment, the sea conditions are very rough out there, the wind is very strong,” John Fitzgerald, chief officer of Channel Island Air Search, to AFP.
“I think even the most hardened person out there — they’d have to be really tough to survive those conditions for the length of time that they’d been there.”
The Guernsey coastguard also named the pilot, the only other person in the plane, as David Ibbotson.
British media said he was a 60-year-old married father of three and lived in Scunthorpe in northern England.
– Desperate message –
Argentine media reported that Sala sent a final message before the plane disappeared from radar around 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Guernsey on Monday night.
“I’m on a plane that looks like it’s going to fall apart, and I’m leaving for Cardiff,” the 28-year-old said in a rambling WhatsApp audio message.
“If in an hour and a half you have no news from me, I don’t know if they will send people to look for me, because they will not find me, you know… I’m so scared,” he added.
The player’s mother, Mercedes, told Argentine television channel C5N that the plane belonged to Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman, but he disputed the claim.
“I can say to you categorically that the plane had nothing to do with Cardiff City,” he said.
Dalman said the club had offered to pay for his flight but Sala had “made his own arrangements”.
“I can’t tell you who arranged the flight because I don’t know.”
Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), which is investigating, said the single-engine Piper PA-46 Malibu plane was registered in the United States.
from World Soccer Talk http://bit.ly/2RJH9NA
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