In the same way as AAIB reports are guaranteed not to attribute blame, defending QCs are guaranteed only to say good things about their client.

I think its naive in the extreme to think that AH shouldn't have been tried when 11 people were killed in an incident where the competence of his flying was was questioned. The AAIB results may not have been able to be used as evidence in court, but the sequence of events, did not paint a good picture of the manoeuvre performed.

I think with respect you are missing the point. I struggle to see how there was a realistic prospect of conviction on the charges that were laid. That is the proper test of whether a prosecution should have been brought, not the number of people who sadly lost their lives. Far worse flying may have brought the plane down on wasteland with no harm to anyone except the pilot. "Better" flying could have gone wrong in a completely different way leading to a far greater tragedy.

In court, yes of course. However it is fairly unusual to see one of the country's leading QCs take to social media to say " it was my privilege to have represented such a remarkable man" after the trial.

The crux of the case was whether or not the pilot suffered Cognitive Impairment whilst flying-as alluded to by the defence. Because no one could prove either way he did or he didn't he was acquitted. If on the other hand the jury had decided that he probably didn't suffer from CI (No previous medical history, no evidence he did, RAF expert saying not) then the prospect of conviction (due to the flying involved) would have been reasonable.

I'm sorry, the public would have been outraged if no charges had been brought in the circumstances. AH has answered these charges, and was acquitted fair and square.

Thanks dagenham - all also checked scanned etc - one thing about falling over near the doctors'(and NOT near the pub Shy!) is that they grab you and test everything -well, almost everything.

I'm humbly grateful for all tis concern over my health - seriously.

Maybe the Gosport tubes will rise again!

There are two tests that a case must satisfy before a prosecution will take place.

The first is the evidential test - the "realistic prospect of conviction" to which you refer. That simply means that, in the view of the CPS, a jury is more likely to convict than not.

The second is the public interest test, which takes into account a number of factors including the amount of loss or harm resulting from the alleged offence. In this case, the fact that 11 members of the public were killed would obviously be one of those factors.

Clearly not all cases that pass those tests result in a guilty verdict, and this wasn't one. Hindsight, after the verdict, is a wonderful thing.

Simple truth is that no-one can prove something didn't have an adverse effect on either his judgement or performance that day.
I can't see that any other verdict was possible.

Comment supporting BV deleted.

This has already been said/asked...but how on earth can 43 hours on type (gained between 2011-2015) be enough to display an aircraft like the Hunter over populated areas?!!

Forget the dissimilar JP time: circa 10 Hunter hours a year + mishandling the entry to a loop = 11 non-spectators dead.

I don't want to hang AH out to dry, but something doesn't seem right here.

Ask H Peacock - he thinks it's OK.

A pretty good discussion here on the verdict by Tim Davies who is a former RN and RAF Pilot.

Oh dear, still smarting over that "Derry turn" ...

Very astute! It's called a "Canadian Break" by the way…...

A few people have pointed out that cognitive impairment might easily have led him to fly the Hunter that he had very few hours in like the Jet Provost that he had a lot in. The logic that follows is that if that basic error was the result of mild cognitive impairment then he's not to blame. Should we accept that view, if he is a highly experienced FJ pilot, instructor & ATPL pilot/BA Captain? Surely risk analysis - the risk of not having enough hours to be current enough to safely fly the display he wanted to fly - was entirely his own responsibility. That he had the right ticks in the right boxes was surely nowhere near enough, as demonstrated by the fact that he crashed the way he did, but more than that, he should have _known_ that the risk factors identified here were all holes in a Swiss Cheese that were lining up, waiting for him to have a fuzzy moment & fly a loop in a Jet Provost rather than the Hunter he was actually sitting in... in that interpretation, mild cognitive impairment isn't a defence, it's the mechanism by which his failure to manage his own personal risk factors, through gathering all the right box ticks without any of the reassuring current experience they are meant to warrant & represent, risk factors he had the experience to know about in advance, led to the 11 deaths.

Either those 11 deaths are just one of those terrible downsides of airshows and aerobatics 'being a thing', and we all just have to accept that one day the Red Arrows _WILL_ plunge into a primary school after a Ramstein style mid-air catastrophe, because that's the price of us having air displays over places where people live on & travel over the ground OR this happened because somebody [possibly multiple people] were negligent & failed to do their job of ensuring that this did not happen and/or ensuring that if it did happen, due to the hypothetical impossibility of preventing it, nobody was going to be underneath it when it did.

If Andy Hill had parked himself & his Hunter 6 foot under an empty field, I suspect that this would be a long forgotten incident, but he didn't & it isn't. However, I also can't shake the thought that if it hadn't been Mr Hill & his Hunter, we would at some point have been having a similar discussion about a bird strike afflicted Vulcan hitting a Tesco Extra or a formation of mid-air colliding warbirds at Duxford wiping out a couple of coach parties stuck in traffic on the M11...

Has anyone answered the Why? he was the display pilot?

Was this Hunter a regular event aircraft or flown as rarely as Hill flew it?

If it was a regular display aircraft, where was it's regular pilot?

I seem to remember that CH was supposed to be the pilot for the display but was unavailable, hence AH flew it. I don't know the reason, nor do I know the normal usage for this aircraft.

CH was on his family holiday, IIRC, and thus AH had been in the frame for flying the display instead at Shoreham for about a month previously.

Absolutely. GeeRam thanks for making my point more specifically.

It might be that the re-occurrence of an event of a similar nature to that being discussed, would be lessened if Historic Aircraft, already a finite source, would of necessity be confined to a more sedate display.

I'm second to none in my liking for, and appreciation of, displays of energetic aerobatics flown with panache but, pulling high G loads does not bode well for the extended lifespan of Historic Aircraft airframes.

The public, by and large, attend air displays with a camera and are thrilled and excited by the appearance of their favourite aircraft. Photo opportunities of Historic Aircraft making sedate passes, wing overs, gentle turns are surely all that is required. Pilots and airframes alike could benefit from more restrained displays, thus providing some additional element of safety to the routine.

Seeing the aircraft in restrained flight is almost as good as seeing it demonstrated exuberantly.