New messages reveal football star's fateful decision before doomed flight

Newly-released WhatsApp messages reveal Emiliano Sala rejected an offer from Cardiff City to take a different flight from Nantes.

The messages come amid startling new claims from Willie McKay, a former agent who helped his son act in Sala’s transfer from Nantes to Cardiff.

McKay, whose son Mark McKay had a temporary mandate from Sala’s previous club Nantes to negotiate the player’s transfer to the English Premier League side, said Cardiff had “let themselves down” and “abandoned Sala” to sort out his own flight details.

“He was abandoned in a hotel more or less to do his travel arrangements himself,” McKay told the BBC in an interview alongside his son.

“Nobody in Cardiff seemed to be doing anything. I think Cardiff let themselves down badly.

“The way they’ve acted so far, they’ve been a disgrace.”

However the new WhatsApp messages, obtained by French outlet Ouest-France, appear to reveal a Cardiff player liaison officer did actually reach out to Sala with an offer of a commercial flight.

The Cardiff official posted a screenshot of details of a flight passing through Paris.

“It is an option perhaps, Cardiff-Paris. But it is early,” the messages say.

But Sala said he already had it sorted.

“I have a flight going tomorrow to Nantes and return Monday night to Cardiff,” he wrote.

“Willie McKay called me.”

Questions over legality of flight

Flown by pilot David Ibbotson, the small plane carrying the 28-year-old Argentine striker came down in the Channel en route to Cardiff on January 21, two days after he completed his transfer from French side Nantes.

Cardiff had previously said that they had offered their new forward a commercial flight, but Sala instead chose to fly privately.

Willie McKay told the BBC he arranged the ill-fated flight through an experienced pilot who had flown him and many of his players “all over Europe on countless occasions”.

The former agent said the pilot, David Henderson, did not own the plane and he did not know who Henderson was going to ask to fly it.

Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said on Monday the private plane did not have a commercial licence.

However, it said the journey would have been allowed as a “private” flight in which costs are shared between pilot and passenger.

The McKays said Thursday that they have been made “scapegoats” but believe investigations will show the crash was a result of “pilot error”.

with agencies