Romain wrote:
The PA46 is quite tight to get on the pilots seat
Romain wrote:
I would bet that the body they found is the pilot strapped in his seat.
Media cite reports the body had been spotted in the back. No mentioning so far if it was one or two.
An attempt my the passenger to launch a life raft ?
Or am I being naive that this sort of operation has a life raft on the aircraft and the passenger safety brief includes the basic details of how to launch it.
WarleyAir wrote:
Understand the Malibu is at some 200 – 300 feet.
If it’s in the range of 60-65 meters this should be dived with trimix 15/55 as bottom gas. I would definitely go with rebreather to avoid time pressure counting on bottom time 30-45 minutes to have enough time for the documenting wreck tasks. If diving open circuit such dive can be safely done with double 18 liter tanks and one stage tank plus two deco tanks. And taking DPV (scooter) is definitively good idea for such dive. Depending on currents and weather total run time should be limited to 3 hours.
I come across this well written document a whole section regarding water recovery ops tough most of it is specific to comercial aircrafts,
So, they’ve apparently decided not to recover the airplane. See here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/06/body-recovered-wreckage-emiliano-salas-plane-investigators-say/
This article is not behind the paywall, so no sub required. Looks like AAIB sent a ROV down and took pictures. Body has been recovered, though.
Well, not so much a decision they wanted to take but they recovered the body first and found that conditions did not allow them to recover the plane. The way the AAIB writes however would suggest that they got plenty of camera footage of the wreckage, possibly even inside it and have what they need to conclude their investigation.
It will depend who the body was whether there may be another recovery effort or not.
The BBC have reported that the recovered body was Emiliano Sala.
So how the hell did the pilot get out, because in a PA46 there is only one way out and that is past the passenger(s).
On a TBM – another cabin-class plane – you can have the $80,000 optional pilot door so you can escape from the front 
But on a PA46 you need to be a bit of a contortionist to get out from the front seat(s) in a hurry.
That’s unless the front was smashed / broken off and he just floated out.
Coda wrote:
This is what I was thinking a couple days ago… if the pilot is missing but the passenger is present, then that opens up a huge range of interesting questions.
Excuse me for quoting myself… I have been wondering about this for a few days. Due to the fact that there were and still are vast sums of money involved (insurance!), the the player was not sent with a profi air-limo service, there are open questions about why DH cancelled, why the plane apparently made several aborted takeoffs, the weather wasn’t that bad, why the descent to FL23 instead of a climb – maybe the pilot was coerced somehow into taking the silk elevator down to a waiting ship leaving the passenger to his fate… hmm this sounds familiar… I watch too many movies.
