It was discovered, held together only by cables, in an underwater search.
Radar data has provided an almost complete record of the flight on 21 January.
There was a band of showers, some heavy, passing through the area of the flight.
The freezing level was between 3,000 and 4,000ft. When it entered Jersey air space the plane was flying at 5,500ft.
An Air Accidents Investigations Branch interim report released yesterday said that the pilot, David Ibbotson, used a flight planning and navigation software app on his tablet computer, but the tablet was not found in the wreckage.
The aircraft was not fitted with an accident-protected flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder and was not required to be.
In the report it states that, after departure from Nantes, France, the Piper Malibu, registration N264DB, climbed to 5,500ft.
After a series of turns while descending to as low as 1,600ft and climbing back up, radio contact was lost.
To understand the cause of the accident, an underwater search was undertaken by the Safety Investigation Authority.
The AAIB established the most likely location for where the aircraft struck the surface of the sea by analysing radar data and the flight profile during the final minutes of the flight.
The Ministry of Defence’s salvage and marine operations project team then factored in the depth of water and tidal flow to determine the primary area for the seabed search, which was an area of four nautical miles squared, approximately 22 nm north-north-west of Guernsey.
Aware of a separate, privately funded search, the AAIB worked in close liaison to maximise chances of locating the wreckage.
Approximately 30 metres east of the last radar contact, the wreckage was found on 6 February with a body inside, later identified as that of Mr Sala.
Despite a further search of the wreckage and surroundings, no evidence was found of Mr Ibbotson and deterioration of weather and sea conditions meant it was not safe to continue the operation or recover the wreckage.
ROV [remotely operated vehicle] video footage revealed that the aircraft had extensive damage and the main body was in three parts held together by cables.
The engine had disconnected from the cockpit area, and the rear section of the fuselage had broken away from the forward section next to the trailing edge of the wing. The outboard section of both wings, tail plane and fin were missing.
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