A friend of Phillip Farrugia passed on this information
He told me that Phillip Farrugia was a nice quiet guy who worked for IDC company in Libya on Rig 39 in 1980/1 and had actually survived a desert well blowout.
Phillip had come back to work for another company just before the accident, possibly a firm called Baker-Hughes. He didn't know whether Phillip worked with my brother Desmond. Phillip's friend said he was still in Tripoli when 9H-ABU disappeared and of course heard the story about the horrendous inward flight and the fact that it was all the pilots fault.
He confirmed that it really was a terrible, terrible night and on reflection doesn't believe any sane pilot would have taken off without waiting at least a few more hours for daylight, even if the plane was 100% ok. He also told me he that he has left Libya now but is still in contact with some people there.
The other interesting thing he told me was that the company he worked for (IDC) had just been bought by a Libyan and there were many relatives of the new owners passing through the office on the airport road . One of these was a military pilot married to a Bulgarian, who had been up all night searching for the wreckage and he said that, "the Americans had also helped", presumably by satellite imagery etc. and they had found, "something that was of interest to Libya", while searching for the Maltese plane. He explained that this was a Libyan plane that had previously gone down. Phillip's friend wasn't sure if this was a military or civilian plane.
He also expressed his sorrow at the death of Phillip and the other missing men and hoped that some information may come out now that the Libyan regime has, at last, fallen.