A former RAF pilot who was flying a Hawker Hunter aircraft during the 2015 Shoreham Airshow which went down during a maneuver and went up in a fireball on a highway has been acquitted by a jury on charges of manslaughter by gross negligence.
The newspaper Stock Daily Dish reports that Andrew Hill had been charged in the deaths of 11 people when his plane went down on a highway near the airport. Several others on the ground were injured. Hill was also seriously injured, but miraculously survived when he was ejected from the airplane during the accident sequence.
Hill's attorney, Karim Khailil QC, said the pilot suffered from "cognitive impairment" possibly caused by hypoxia due to high G-forces experienced during the maneuver ... a "bent loop" ... which led to the accident. Hill was placed in an induced coma after the accident, and he told the court that he had no memory of the three days that preceded the accident. He said he has spent the last three years "trying to resolve what happened."
Britain's AAIB determined that the cause of the accident was "pilot error". They said the plane was too low when he began the loop maneuver.
The former RAF instructor said he blacked out in the air during the maneuver.
The accident led the U.K. CAA to make substantial changes in its rules governing air shows in an effort to improve safety.