Originally Posted by
Easy Street
Hill's failings can't be reduced to the single fateful mistake of continuing the loop. As has been recounted, he had made mistakes in previous displays and should have had some awareness of his own shortcomings of experience, training and currency as a result of them. He had days/weeks/months in which to realise that displaying a high performance swept wing aircraft in a confined site was not wise. The fact that regulations allowed him to reflects poorly indeed on the regulator, but it doesn't absolve Hill of primary responsibility.
As for whether the fateful action was 'intended', well of course he didn't intend to crash or kill people. But he did intend to fly the display while inadequately prepared (having not practised the requisite escape manoeuvre) and, excepting the remote possibility that he did so involuntarily while incapacitated, he did intend to continue the loop having entered low and apexed below gate height. Those actions alone might be judged to reach the balance of probabilities test for gross negligence manslaughter, and in that sense the Coroner had enough to reach her verdict.
You present a plausible argument,
Easy Street, but haven't yet addressed the point I made in
my first post:
"As a layperson, it seems to me that any proposal of gross negligence on the part of a pilot flying alone has to address the fact that (s)he is usually the party most likely to suffer any serious consequences. Therefore, I'm wondering if a finding of gross-negligence manslaughter can be applied in this case. Did the coroner have any evidence that Mr Hill made a deliberate attempt to impact the public road, rather than open spaces nearby?"
If not, the fact that Mr Hill was the most likely victim of his own mistake surely distinguishes his culpability from that of the two clinicians in the so-called Misra case.