Wasn't it reported at the time that it was Colin Wanker's son that arranged the plane? How can Nantes be responsible?
No, it was Willie McKay who arranged the flight. McKay's son Mark acted as an agent for Nantes in at least the early stages of the transfer.
I think Cardiff have acted like twats in this, but it's widely reported that they expressed misgivings about the flight arrangements for Sala's trip to Nantes to 'say farewell to his old teammates' and back to Cardiff, and Cardiff offered to arrange travel for Sala on a commercial flight. In terms of the actual flight in which Sala died, Cardiff can't be blamed.
The real story behind all this IMO is the shady world of private flights. It really is a mess, with loopholes everywhere exploited by shysters.
On the face of it, there is a professional body that governs the whole charter flight industry in the UK (Baca). Companies signing up to this (ranging from operators of a couple of small planes to multinational giants like Easyjet) pay a levy and have to adhere to rigid standards on safety, engineering checks, pilots, etc, and receive an Air Operator's Certificate (AOC). This part of the industry isn't a problem.
Outside of this, plane owners & pilots aren't allowed to fly people for commercial gain. But there is a huge grey/black market in plane owners/pilots ferrying people around for financial reward. Sometimes it's as simple as just illegally accepting payment for a flight, other times the pilot/owner will make a pretence of legitimacy by creating an arrangement of 'sharing the cost' (ie, the pilot wants to fly somewhere and anybody happening to be going the same place can chip in to help cover the cost of fuel/airport fees).
The situation is further muddied by the system of planes each being registered in a specific country, but operating in others. Different countries have differing quality of safety standards (eg, the standards in the US are less stringent than those of the UK/Europe). Many planes operating in the UK - including the one Sala died aboard - are registered in the US, but their true ownership is deliberately obscured by use of 'Trustee' firms/arrangements. The company providing this service to the owners of the fateful Sala plane state on their website: "We specialise in providing individual trust agreements to non-US citizens to enable them to legally register their aircraft on the American 'N' register.". The trustee company has reportedly provided the owner information to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, but the database of the US Federal Aviation Administration has been amended to remove the document detailing the owners & associated companies.
There had been seven flights back and forth between Cardiff & Nantes in the arranging and finalising of the transfer deal, involving different parties (McKay, Colin, other CCCFC staff, Sala, his agent). The first seems totally legit through a charter company; one was on the private plane of Lord Porchester who insists he did this as a favour to McKay and wasn't paid a penny; the rest were through a Guernsey-based charter company. This Guernsey-based company held an AOC - but only for Guernsey-registered aircraft. The two used in this series of flights were US-registered and listed on official flight plans as 'non-commercial'. The originally planned pilot - David Henderson - couldn't make it so the charter company used David Ibbotson, an amateur pilot, gas engineer and part-time DJ who didn't have a licence to fly at night was was colour-blind. As the flights were almost certainly illegally commercial, it calls into question the validity of the charter company's insurance.
I think the Cardiff argument is that McKay arranged the ill-fated flight, and McKay was acting as an agent of Nantes. Ergo, Nantes by extension are responsible for the flight. And, as the flight seems to have been run illegally as a commercial transaction, Nantes presumably have a level of responsibility for this (failure of due diligence?)
I wouldn't agree, and think Nantes are innocent of all but trusting McKay to use a legitimate charter plane.
Cardiff also innocent (although that hasn't stopped them acting like dicks)
The guilty parties appear to be the charter company for illegally using planes not licenced for commercial use and unsuitably qualified/experienced pilots, and registered overseas to presumably avoid more stringent safety standards.
Baca have been flagging up this sort of illegal activity to the CAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) for years, and the Baca chief exec has said that it was only if a famous person was killed that the authorities might do something about this. In the world of football, there are hundreds of these flights used every year, and this was a tragedy waiting to happen.
