Photos Of The Pilot And The Plane Missing With Cardiff City Footballer

The pilot missing with footballer Emiliano Sala has today been named as a British father-of-three and gas engineer from Scunthorpe.

David Ibbotson, 60, was reportedly at the controls of the privately-owned Piper Malibu aircraft believed to have crashed into the sea near Alderney on Monday night.

The pilot, whose nickname is 'Dibbo', is married with three children and lives with his wife Nora near Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and according to his Facebook account he checked into a hotel next to Nantes Airport on Saturday night.

He is an experienced pilot specialising in private flights and parachute expeditions but also is a qualified gas engineer running his own boiler repair company in North Lincolnshire.

This is the plane that Sala and the pilot were in when in vanished over the sea it appears to be registered to a company in Norfolk.