Emiliano Sala pilot told friend plane was ‘dodgy’ before fatal flight

The pilot of a plane in which the footballer Emiliano Sala died told a friend the aircraft was “dodgy”, after an outward flight from Cardiff to Nantes.

The 28-year-old player was flying from Nantes in France to Wales to join then Premier League club Cardiff City when the plane crashed in the Channel close to Guernsey.

His pilot, 59-year-old David Ibbotson, was also killed. Audio aired on the BBC’s Transfer: The Emiliano Sala Story podcast captures Ibbotson expressing his concerns.

In a voicemail to his friend Kevin Jones, aired on the podcast, Ibbotson can be heard saying: “I picked a footballer up from Cardiff. He’s just been bought from Nantes for, I think it was about, £20m-worth or something.

“They’ve entrusted me to pick him up in a dodgy (aircraft). Normally I have my lifejacket between my seats but tomorrow I’m wearing my lifejacket, that’s for sure.”

An inquest in March found the Argentina-born striker was unconscious when he died from head and chest injuries on the evening of 21 January 2019, having been poisoned by fumes from the Piper Malibu’s faulty exhaust system.

Ibbotson, whose body has never been found, was an amateur pilot and was not allowed to carry passengers or fly at night.

He told Jones that he heard a bang during the outward flight before departing Nantes. “I’m mid-Channel and ‘bang’,” the pilot said in the recording.

“I’m flying along and then ‘boom’. I thought, ‘what’s wrong?’ So I put everything forward and checked my parameters, everything was good and it was still flying, but it got your attention.”

He said: “That Malibu, occasionally you’ve got like a mist every so often. You can feel it, very, very low throughout the airframe.”

“This aircraft has got to go back in the hanger,” he added,