Airshow pilot Andrew Hill, 53, whose 1955 Hawker Hunter crashed in August 2015, killing 11 men, has been charged with “manslaughter by gross negligence” in a British court. He will appear before a judge on April 19. The 11 who died were either in vehicles on the road or standing on the roadside, outside the airfield. Twelve others, plus Hill, were injured. Hill had attempted to perform a loop during his airshow display, but failed to complete it, and crashed. He also will be charged with endangering an aircraft.
Since the accident, warbird performances in the U.K. have been shifted to sites over water. Hill, an experienced airshow pilot, hit the top of a loop 800 feet lower and 50 knots slower than required for the Hunter and was not able to recover. Investigators said he had recently renewed his airshow performance permit on a Jet Provost, which has different performance characteristics than the Hunter, and “a possible error path was that the pilot recalled the wrong numbers, essentially mixing up the two aircraft.”
Video, by Dan Tube, published August 2015
