THE pilot of a helicopter that crashed as it was flying Chelsea football fans back south after last night's Champions League defeat at Liverpool was a Hampshire company boss.
The chopper had been contracted from Lee-on-the-Solent based firm Atlas Helicopters and the firm's co-owner Stephen Holdich was flying the machine when it came down.
The crash prompted emergency services from three different counties to launch a massive search and rescue operation after the aircraft vanished in the early hours of this morning.
The helicopter had been on route from John Lennon Airport in Liverpool and was on its way to a private landing site near Peterborough when it disappeared off radar. It left Liverpool shortly after 11pm.
Earlier this morning police announced wreckage thought to have come from the helicopter had been found between Wansford and Duddington, west of Peterborough.
It is not yet been confirmed whether the wreckage was part of the Twin Squirrel helicopter, nor whether any of the four passengers or Mr Holdich survived the landing.
A spokeswoman at Atlas Helicopters, based at HMS Daedalus, refused to comment on the crash.
A four-man team from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has gone to the wreckage site.
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