Air crash kills millionaire and son

Phillip Carter and his teenage son Andrew died when the Twin Squirrel helicopter came down in the early hours in Wansford, Cambridgeshire.

Mr Carter, founder of training firm Carter & Carter, now worth more than £500 million, was one of eight honorary vice presidents of Chelsea FC. He was travelling back from their Champions League clash with Liverpool in the North West to his sprawling country home at Thornhaugh Hall.

Two other men, pilot Stephen Holdich, 49, and Mr Carter's friend Jonathan Waller, a 42-year-old debt collector, also died in the crash.

The aircraft - call sign G-BYPA - disappeared from radar screens just after midnight after taking off from John Lennon Airport in Liverpool. Search helicopters from RAF Wittering spent the morning scouring land near Wansford, including forests, farmland, quarries and a landfill site. The wreckage was found in woodland near the village and investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch spent the day at the scene.

It is thought the helicopter may have been heading for a cricket field landing pad at the Haycock Hotel, in Wansford, which is run by Mr Carter's wife Judith.

The incident brought tragic echoes of a crash which killed Chelsea's vice-chairman Matthew Harding in 1996. Mr Harding died with four other men when their Twin Squirrel helicopter crashed in Cheshire as they returned from a Bolton Wanderers match.

Mr Carter leaves Judith, with whom he co-founded Carter & Carter, and a teenage daughter. He held shares worth some £100 million in the fast-growing firm after floating it on the stock exchange in 2005. The company, based in Nottingham, specialises in vocational training, particularly apprenticeships for the vehicle industry. It employs more than 500 people. Its shares were suspended earlier today at the company's request.

Mr Carter's son Andrew is thought to have been in the sixth form at Stamford School, an independent boarding school in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Helicopter pilot Mr Holdich was the co-owner of operating company Atlas Helicopters, of Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire. Jack Irvine, of Atlas Helicopters, said Mr Holdich had 20 years' flying experience. He said staff were "deeply shocked". Mr Waller leaves a seven-year-old daughter Jodie, his brother said in a statement at the family home in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. Adrian Waller, 48, said their blind mother Shirley, who recently came out of hospital, was "distraught".