Emiliano Sala: Private underwater search for missing plane underway
The search for the wreckage has been narrowed to four square nautical miles in the English Channel
Sunday 3 February 2019 21:30, UK
The private underwater search for the missing plane carrying footballer Emiliano Sala and pilot David Ibbotson is underway.
Chief investigator David Mearns, who is a shipwreck hunter and marine biologist, will lead the underwater search with two vessels conducting sonar surveys off Guernsey.
Mearns has said they will cooperate with the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), who will be providing one of the vessels.
The search for the wreckage has been narrowed to four square nautical miles - it lies 24 miles (38.6km) north of Guernsey towards the French coast.
Cushions believed to be from the plane were washed up on a beach near Surtainville on France's Cotentin Peninsula.
The plane carrying Cardiff City's January signing Sala and pilot Ibbotson disappeared while flying over the English Channel on January 21.
The Argentine was travelling to the Welsh capital from Nantes, where he had previously played.
Guernsey police stopped looking for Sala and Ibbotson three days later, with officials saying the chance of them being alive was extremely unlikely.
However, a privately-funded search for the plane started after a GoFundMe page raised more than £300,000 online.
Mearns, who is leading the private operation, told Sky News: "We will be running lines in a grid pattern, we call it mowing the lawn, just like you mow the lawn to make sure the grass is cut, we do the same thing so we have 100 per cent coverage of the seabed.
"Once we locate any wreckage then we go into the next phase of identifying it visually with a robotic vehicle... that will be to define and identify the wreckage."
Mearns said they were cautiously optimistic: "If it was summertime it would be straightforward but there's a lot of complications.
"I don't want to give people false hope, there's never a guarantee with a search, particularly in this area where wreckage can actually move. We saw earlier this morning there were seven French trawlers in that area with scallop dredgers on the seabed.
"Hopefully, they haven't disturbed anything beyond anything like that and we have a very good chance of finding this."
Sala's family arrived in Guernsey last Sunday ahead of the private search.
There were tributes to Sala on Saturday as Cardiff played their first home game since the striker went missing.
