Pilot who crashed at Shoreham Airshow charged with manslaughter

The pilot whose plane crashed in the Shoreham Airshow disaster, killing 11 men, will be charged with manslaughter by gross negligence, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced.

Eleven people were killed in the Shoreham Airshow disaster

Andrew Hill also faces allegations of endangerment of an aircraft under air navigation laws after the vintage Hawker Hunter jet plummeted onto the A27 in West Sussex at 1:22pm on 22 August 2015.

The 1950s fighter bomber failed to pull out of a loop-the-loop and crashed in a fireball.

Hill, a trained Royal Air Force instructor and fast jet pilot, was thrown clear of the aircraft but taken to hospital with serious injuries and placed into an induced coma before being discharged.

Simon Ringrose, of the CPS special crime division, announced the news to families of the victims at a private meeting in Lewes, East Sussex, on Wednesday evening.

In a statement he said: “Following a careful review of the evidence I have found there is sufficient evidence to charge Andrew Hill with the manslaughter by gross negligence of the 11 men who died.”