The prosecution failed in several ways.
it attempted to cast AH as a cavalier, negligent, and over-confident pilot. It adduced as evidence to upport this view an overflight of the M11 at less than 500 feet. Wrong - the limit was 200 feet. He crossed the crowd line at Duxford. Again wrong, it wasn’t where the prosecution witness said it was. Flying a dangerous manoeuvre at Southport and had to be told to stop. Wrong. He fell out of a Derry turn in poor visibility and had knocked off before the stop call. He overflew Lancing College in 2014. Wrong. The supposed CAM expert on G-Force failed some basic calculations, as did the star prosecution witness.
the Defence Barrister maybe very good, but he was left with several open goals. The Prosecution Barrister was clearly flailing around by the time he got to summing up, and managed several factual inaccuracies.
Further, there may well be problems with the conduct of air shows, the issuing of DA’s etc, but those are not AH’s fault. He complied with the rules and requirements as they were on the day.
Personally I cannot imagine that a pilot of this level of ability and experience would commit to a manoeuvre that clearly was going to end in tragedy, for himself and others, if he was in command of his faculties. I believe the jury came to the correct verdict.
Caramba