The Hunter 7 has a gaseous anti-g system; if that fails unexpectedly you might well grey out. But it's a pretty reliable system and the +g available in the accident manoeuvre would seem to have been less than would cause the pilot to lose consciousness if the anti-g system failed.
However, one video shows wing rock prior to ground impact; to me this would indicate that the pilot was conscious and attempting to recover from the dive.
The 100-ser Avon is prone to compressor surge with rapid throttle movement as the fuel control units are rather primitive. Disturbingly, an accident report into an earlier Hunter F4 accident at Dunsfold included the statement:
....records kept on a computerised database between 1980 and 1992 showed 22 cases involving the Avon Mk 122 engine where engine speed had dropped and subsequent engineering investigation had not established a clear cause. Anecdotal evidence indicated that Avon Mk 122 engines had suffered from unexplained power reductions from time to time during RAF service, but in most cases the aircraft had returned safely and the subsequent RAF engineering investigations, including related engine ground runs, had failed to identify associated causes or to reproduce the symptoms.
(The Dunsfold accident considered that it was possible that the pilot had operated the HP pump isolation switch in error, when reaching for the display smoke switch which had been installed nearby. Unless the throttle is closed when the HPPIS is selected to ISOLATE, this would have caused sufficient overfuelling to destroy the engine very quickly, which would have been obvious to external observers. As there was no such pre-impact fire seen in any of the Shoreham videos, I doubt whether any HPPIS operation had been made in this instance).
Until the AAIB has completed its work, technical cause cannot be ruled out. So those self-professed 'experts' pointing their fingers at aircrew error need to keep open minds whilst the real experts do their sad work. I am also
very surprised that Capt. Brown has suggested that pilot error was the cause of this accident.
Nevertheless, pulling to the buffet with a partial loss of thrust would lead to a greater than anticipated rate of descent. If that happens in the last quarter of a looping manoeuvre at low level, chances of recovery to level flight are slim.
Raising the base height for jet aircraft aerobatics by non-military operators would seem reasonable, so I hope that the CAA's initial ban will only apply until a thorough analysis of other options has been completed.