Inquest opens as family of pilot David Ibbotson say search for his body must go on

The footballer Emiliano Sala died of head and trunk injuries when the plane he was in crashed into the Channel, an inquest has heard.

During a five-minute hearing at Bournemouth town hall in Dorset, it emerged that Sala was formally identified by a fingerprint expert.

The court was told that his body was recovered from international waters off the island of Guernsey.

The senior acting coroner Brendan Allen said investigations were being carried out by the police, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) and the Civil Aviation Authority.

Allen said the AAIB inquiry was likely to take between six and 12 months, and he adjourned the inquest until 6 November. No members of Sala’s family were present.

Sala was referred to by his full name, Emiliano Raúl Sala. His date of birth was given as 31 October 1990 and his place of birth Esperanza, Santa Fe, Argentina.

The coroner’s officer Ian Parry said the plane carrying Sala and the pilot, David Ibbotson, left Nantes for Cardiff on 21 January. “Air traffic control lost contact during the flight and an extensive search operation was carried out,” he said.

After the plane was located in international waters, Sala’s body was recovered and taken to Portland in Dorset. On 7 February the body was identified using fingerprint evidence. Basil Purdue, a Home Office forensic pathologist, carried out a postmortem examination on the same day and concluded that the cause of death was head and trunk injuries.

The full inquest will not take place before next year. The November date is for a pre-inquest review.

Meanwhile, the family of Ibbotson have spoken of their determination to find and recover the body of the man they described as “our rock”.

In her first broadcast interview, his wife, Nora Ibbotson, said: “We just know we can’t leave him out there on his own until we have tried to do everything we can.”

More than £140,000 has been raised by a campaign to restart the search for the pilot, including donations from Gary Lineker and Kylian Mbappé.

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ibbotson said: “This is why we’ve done the appeal, just for some help.”

Sala’s body was recovered in a privately funded search that was launched after the initial search was called off.

Ibbotson said she wanted rescuers to send down a remote-controlled submarine to the wreck of the plane to search again for her 59-year-old husband. She said: “Just to be able to go down and just have a last look. A proper look. I know the conditions aren’t brilliant. I know it is such a dangerous sea, but just so that we know ourselves that we had that last [look].”

If a body were found it would cost up to £300,000 to recover it. Ibbotson said being reunited with her husband’s body would allow “the family unit to be back – so we can go and visit him. And just to know that he’s there.”

Asked when she had lost all hope, she said: “We are still holding on a little bit. Obviously we do know he’s gone, but we want him back. Until we know that we won’t be able to get him back, that will be when we can say he’s gone.”

She paid tribute to her missing husband: “He’s been a brilliant husband. He’s supported us all, he was our support, he was our rock.”

The couple’s daughter Danielle said the search for her father “might take a long time, but I don’t want this just to be it”.

She said: “He was amazing. I’m so lucky to have him as a dad. He called me Little Legs because I’m only small, that was my nickname. He was the type of dad that he wouldn’t just give you a hug he’d lift you up off the floor, because he just said he loved us all so much.”

She said she had struggled to accept that had her father had been killed in the crash on 21 January. When the police informed her that plane was missing she repeatedly tried to call her father on his mobile. “I was sat there ringing my dad, you know, as if it’s not my dad.”

Before the flight, David Ibbotson messaged a friend to say he was “a bit rusty” with the instrument landing system on the plane. His wife insisted he was an experienced pilot and that the remark was a joke.

She said: “It’s like when you go on holiday, two or three weeks and you come back and you get in our car because you haven’t driven for a few days, it’s that. We’ve all done it, I have, that was just Dave.”

Asked if he was allowed to carry passengers in the plane, she said: “He had a private licence so he was able to carry passengers. Other than that, with the investigation going on, I really can’t say any more.”

She added: “It wasn’t his work; he was a gas engineer, but his passion for flying, that was Dave.”