Moment fireball
SHOCKING footage of the Shoreham Air Show disaster was played to a hushed courtroom yesterday, showing the final moments in the lives of the victims.
Andrew Hill, 54, was performing a loop in a vintage jet when it crashed and exploded into a fireball on the A27 in West Sussex in August 2015, killing 11 people.
Yesterday, relatives of the victims sat quietly in a packed public gallery as videos taken by spectators showed the plane crashing on to the busy dual carriageway.
Dramatic images taken from the aircraft’s cockpit as Hill performed his doomed stunt before smashing into the ground were also played in court.
It was the first time the footage, around 90 seconds long, has been shown in public.
The images were shown after jurors were told the former RAF pilot committed the “cardinal sin” of trying to complete the stunt instead of performing an escape manoeuvre.
The tragedy happened after the British Airways captain made a “catalogue of errors” while attempting to perform the “highest risk” stunt possible in the 1950s Hunter Hawker jet, the court heard.
Prosecutor Tom Kark QC told the court: “All display pilots are aware that failures in airmanship put their own lives and the lives of those on the ground at risk.
“Any reasonable display pilot would have foreseen that the risk of death was obvious, serious and avoidable.
“At the crucial point when Mr Hill committed to the downward part of the loop there was a serious and obvious risk of death to those on the ground – a risk that was to be tragically realised.”
Hill lowered his head in the dock before glancing at the jury