Raissa's Blog - Best of Sports, Culture, and Entertainment

Emiliano Sala (left) and David Ibbotson (right) A new search for the body of missing David Ibbotson who piloted the doomed plane carrying Cardiff City footballer Emiliano Sala will resume next week, as revealed by the pilot's family. David Ibbotson was flying Emiliano Sala - in a Piper Malibu aircraft - to Wales when it went missing over the English Channel last month. An official search for the missingSala and Ibbotson was called off on January 24 but a private search discovered the wreckage on the sea bed of the English Channel and a body, whichturned out to be Sala's .  Emiliano Sala Ibbotson's body wasn't found, so the family set up acrowdfunding campaign to fund a new search for his body. The campaign has so far raised more than £240,000. Ibbotson's daughter Danielle has posted an update on the  fundraising site - a GoFundMe page - thanking donors and announcing the possible resumption of the search next week. "Thank you all so much for you

David Mearns, oceanographer and director of Bluewater Recoveries, who headed the renewed search efforts to locate the then missing plane carrying Emiliano Sala and David Ibbotson, says both Sala and Ibbotson's families know they are dead. Mearns and his company were able to locate the plane just hours after the search had commenced, with video footage revealing a body on board the wreckage. All hope of miraculously finding the pair alive has been lost as Mearns confirmed the priority is to try to recover the bodies. In an interview with Argentine publication  Clarin , Mearns said,  “What these families know at the moment is that both [Sala and Ibbotson] are dead and what they want is to recover their bodies." “The most important thing is the bodies. Recovering the bodies is the most important thing for both families. The plane is a different matter, that's related only to determining the cause of the accident.” Mearns offered some insight into how the bodies wo