A plane operator who organised the flight in which the footballer Emiliano Sala was killed knew the pilot was not qualified to fly at night and was not competent in bad weather, a jury has been told. The court heard that when David Henderson was told the plane piloted by David Ibbotson had crashed into the sea he messaged a friend: “Ibbo has crashed the Malibu and killed himself and VIP pax [passenger]! Bloody disaster. There will be an enquiry.” He told another contact: “Opens up a whole can of worms. Keep very quiet”. And he sent a note to the plane’s engineer: “Don’t say a word to anyone.” The single-engine Piper Malibu aircraft was flying the 28-year-old Argentinian striker from Nantes in France to Wales, where he was to join Cardiff City, then a Premier League side. It crashed on 21 January 2019 north of Guernsey. Sala’s body was recovered from the seabed the following month, but neither the body of Ibbotson, 59, from Crowle, Lincolnshire, nor the plane’s wreckage have been recovered. Henderson, 67, of Hotham, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, denies acting in a reckless or negligent manner likely to endanger the aircraft. The court heard how Henderson, himself a pilot, was not available to fly the aircraft himself as he was away with his wife in Paris. The jury at Cardiff crown court heard that the football agent Willie McKay asked Henderson to arrange for Sala to be flown from Nantes to the UK. Henderson sent McKay a note: “Can you ping me over £4k as float?” Martin Goudie QC told the jury that Henderson organised for Ibbotson to carry Sala even though he did not have a commercial pilot’s licence and he was not competent to fly in poor weather. Goudie said: “Mr Henderson acted either negligently or recklessly in a manner that was likely to endanger [the plane] and those on it. He ignored certain requirements when it suited him and his business interests.” The jury was told there were issues with Ibbotson’s flying the year before the tragedy. A message from a friend to Henderson in the summer of 2018 after a flight involving the pilot read: “The Ibbotson experience was interesting! He was all over the place.” In an exchange of messages between Henderson and Ibbotson at around the same time, the operator wrote: “We both have an opportunity to make money out of the business model but not if we upset clients or draw the attention of the CAA [the Civil Aviation Authority].” On the morning of 19 January Henderson raised the issue of bad weather with Ibbotson. The pilot flew to Nantes and informed Henderson he had had difficulties with the plane. The time for the flight back to Cardiff was pushed back to after dark on 21 January. Goudie said: “He [Henderson] raised no issue with Mr Ibbotson flying at such a time even though he knew full well Mr Ibbotson was not qualified to fly at night.” At 9.23pm the coastguard spoke to Henderson about the crash. He quickly contacted engineer David Smith and told him: “Don’t say a word to anyone.” Goudie said: “The wording of this message was interesting – it’s not: ‘Isn’t it a disaster someone we’ve been working with has gone missing’; it is instead just: “Don’t say a word to anyone’.” The prosecutor said Ibbotson had never held a commercial pilot’s licence, so he should not have been paid for being a pilot. Nor did he have a “night rating”, required for a flight to be flown between half an hour after sunset to half an hour before sunrise The trial continues.