Father-of-two Simon Moores, 62, whose sister is Paul Hollywood’s ex wife Alex, died when the light aircraft went down near Errezil in the north of Spain in January 2019, the inquest heard

Paul Hollywood’s brother-in-law was killed when his plane crashed into a Spanish mountain in thick fog, an inquest heard.

Father-of-two Simon Moores, 62, died when the light aircraft went down near Errezil in the north of Spain in January 2019, the hearing was told.

Simon’s sister, Alex, 56, had been married to Great British Bake Off judge Paul, 56, but the couple divorced in 2019.

The inquest held on Thursday at Maidstone in Kent heard the chances of the plane landing safely were “remote” in such horrendous conditions.

The hearing was told before the flight took off it was likely there was reduced vision.

Coroner Joanne Andrews said it was impossible to know whether Mr Moores and his passenger, David Hockings, were being “naive or optimistic” in deciding to take off.

It is not known what weather system they had used to determine whether it was safe to fly, the hearing was told.

However, Mrs Andrews said: “Given these weather conditions, the possibility of [landing] the plane was quite frankly remote.”

Mr Moores and Mr Hockings were killed in a Piper Arrow III which was on its way from the Portuguese town of Cascais to San Sebastian before crashing into Mount Hernio.

The inquest heard Mr Moores wasn’t aware of how close he was to the mountains and so did not know of the danger they were in until it was too late. Such deaths are known as “controlled flight into terrain”.

A verdict of accidental death was recorded by Mrs Andrews as she explained the details around the plane journey.

Statements from the authorities in Spain, witness accounts and a post-mortem by Dr Andrew Wild were read out by the Coroner.

No evidence was found there were any issues with either Mr Moores’ ability to fly the plane or with the aircraft itself.

The inquest heard how the aircraft being piloted by Mr Moores, whose Certificate of Airworthiness had last been renewed in 2018, left Cascais at 8.30am local time and crashed at 1.55pm.

Signal was lost between 12.20pm and 12.30pm, before police were informed.

Emergency services had to use ropes to climb almost 1,000 metres to reach the scene.

Mrs Andrews said: “This flight would have been expected to have taken three hours and 42 minutes.

“The evidence I have is the flight went as expected until around 12.30pm that day.”

Concluding the inquest, she added: “In this case, having considered the evidence, I am satisfied that one [a conclusion] of accident can be applied.”

The Coroner also passed her condolences on to Mr Moores’ two children and his wife.

Simon had served as a Conservative councillor on Thanet District Council in Kent for several years from 2007.

He ran a blog called thanetlife.co.uk, on which he posted aerial shots of the Kent coast. He was also a lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University.

Mr Moores, who lived in Westgate-On-Sea, Kent, shared pictures from the plane – captioned “Mountains of mid Spain” – prior to the crash on January 9, 2019.

A previous inquest, held in September 2019, had concluded that the circumstances behind Mr Moores’ death would never be known.