Ashley Wenskoski, Senior
A small plane carrying Argentine soccer star Emiliano Sala disappeared from radar over the English Channel just before 8:30 pm local time on Monday. Sala was traveling from Nantes to Cardiff after bidding his former teammates goodbye in France following his new deal in the English Premier League worth an estimated $19 million. The plane lost contact with air traffic control while it was flying at 2,300 feet, and did not send out a distress call. In the Channel Islands, Guernsey police have been targeting a search area of 280 square miles and have been aided by the U.K. and France in their search efforts. However, not a trace of the plane has turned up anywhere. On Wednesday, authorities asserted that the search was being continued on the basis of four possibilities: that the pilot had landed safely somewhere but had not made contact, that the soccer star and the pilot were picked up by a passing ship, that they had deployed a life raft on board the plane, or that the aircraft shattered when it made contact with the water. They believe that the most likely option was that the two were still alive on a life raft, but have not found any evidence of this. When the search and rescue mission was called off for the night on Tuesday, authorities acknowledged that they did not expect to find any survivors at this point. Unfortunately on Wednesday, the operation was changed to a search and recovery mission with little hope left for finding Sala and his companions.
Comments