Cardiff City's new signing Emiliano Sala asked his agent for help to organise the flight which disappeared over the Channel, Sportsmail can reveal.
The 28-year-old Argentinian striker was concerned about how he could return to his French club on Saturday, collect his belongings, say his goodbyes to team-mates and still be back on Monday in time for training the following morning with his new Premier League team.
Mark McKay, who was acting on behalf of Nantes, chartered the flight and Sala’s French agent Meissa N’Diaye also helped with the arrangements.
Sala is missing presumed dead after the plane he was travelling in was lost over the Channel
Tributes have been pouring in for the Argentinian who had just signed for Cardiff City
Dave Ibbotson was one of the roster of three or four pilots regularly used to fly footballers to France. Ibbotson had undertaken a flight for McKay before Christmas on the same US-registered Piper Malibu light aircraft.
The same combination of aircraft and pilot had also taken the Nice general manager, Julien Fournier, from Fairoaks Airport in Surrey to Marseille last year, after negotiations which saw Jean Michael Seri move from Nice to Fulham.
Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman said on Wednesday that Sala had declined the club's offer to make travel plans for the brief return flight to Nantes, commenting that it would 'quite frankly, have been a commercial flight'.
It is thought that Sala felt the combination of a flight to Paris on Saturday morning and two-and-a-half-hour train journey south-west to Nantes would have left him with little time in the French city.
Cardiff were aware of the player's plans. A player liaison officer was with him on Friday afternoon and waiting for him at Cardiff Airport on Monday.
Manager Neil Warnock was contacted when the plane did not arrive. It was Warnock who alerted McKay, asking him why the player had not turned up.
The single-engine aircraft went missing in the Channel Islands area on Monday evening, prompting a desperate rescue mission for Sala and Ibbotson, for whom all hope is now lost.
Sala sent a haunting text message to a friend minutes before his plane was lost on Monday
One Premier League club executive who has done business with
