Friday, November 12, 2021 at 3:58 PM• Jeroen van Poppel

David Henderson, the businessman who arranged a flight from France for Emiliano Sala in January 2019, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison by a Welsh court. The private plane, which the then 28-year-old striker was supposed to take to his new club Cardiff City, crashed over the Channel. In addition to Sala, pilot David Ibbotson was also killed in the accident.

A Welsh court ruled last month that Henderson, 67, was guilty of endangering the plane. On Friday, he was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, international news agencies reported. Sala was about to make a transfer from Nantes to Cardiff City in early 2019. To finalize the deal, he flew to Wales from France. However, the aircraft crashed over the English Channel and plunged into the sea.

According to the judge, businessman Henderson would initially fly the plane himself, but let Ibbotson fly. The pilot was not proficient because he had not completed training to fly at night. In addition, his license did not allow to be paid for carrying passengers, the report said Air Accidents Investigation Branch. Henderson knew that, the court said. According to the report, Ibbotson suffered carbon monoxide poisoning during the flight. This was caused by a malfunction in the exhaust pipe that caused gas to enter the cabin through the heating system.

The report found that Ibbotson, who was banned from operating commercial flights, chose an alternate route to avoid bad weather just before the plane crashed. He would have lost control of the plane, partly due to the carbon monoxide poisoning. The aircraft landed upside down in the water at a speed of more than 450 kilometers per hour. The report also stated that Sala was likely unconscious during the crash due to the carbon monoxide poisoning. The body of the Argentine striker was found two days after the accident. The pilot’s body has never been found.