Five years and three months have passed since Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City, lost his life in a helicopter accident in October 2018. A death that was questioned by the relatives of the Thai billionaire who took the case to court and are now requesting unprecedented financial compensation for what happened.
A million-dollar lawsuit against the helicopter construction company
Srivaddhanaprabha, at 60 years old, was preparing to leave the stadium in his helicopter, as he usually did, an hour after the end of the Leicester matches at the King Power Stadium, heading to his home in London. And on Saturday, October 28, 2018, he did the same thing around 8:30 p.m. (English time), but something was not going to go as it should. According to eyewitnesses who were around the stadium, the helicopter crashed after a failure in its tail, falling and catching fire a few meters from it. An accident that ended up costing Vichai his life.
Leicester owner’s helicopter crashes near King Power StadiumTWITTER
The owner of the Asian conglomerate King Power, much loved after becoming Premier League champion in the 2015-16 season, had a heartfelt farewell and it was also the beginning of a long journey in court that his relatives began to claim responsibilities. That is why they have now filed a lawsuit in English justice that could be the largest, quantitatively speaking, in the history of this country.
Six years later, the Thai owners have filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England against the Italian manufacturer of the helicopter, Leonardo SpA, which ended up killing five people, including Vichai. It requests 2,150 million pounds – more than 2,500 million euros – from this company. An amount that contemplates the loss of income and other damages to his son and current president of Leicester, Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, as well as all the pain caused to his family after the tragic accident.
LEICESTER (UNITED KINGDOM), 10/29/2018.- The Srivaddhanaprabha family on October 29, 2018 mourning the loss of the club’s owner, Vichai, after his accident.EFE
A complaint that is not new
The research has been going on for the last few years. In fact, in September 2023 a report from the Air Accident Investigation Division (AAIB) was published, after an exhaustive analysis of what went wrong when the helicopter crashed, which stated that the pilot could not avoid the accident due to a failure in the tail rotor. In addition, the safety of the aircraft was questioned, and the legal action claims that the Leonardo company could have made important modifications that could have prevented the fatal accident.
