UK prosecutors charge Shoreham airshow crash pilot with manslaughter

A pilot whose vintage fighter jet crashed into a busy road in southern England in 2015, killing 11 people, has been charged with manslaughter, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The pilot Andrew Hill was performing an acrobatics display at the Shoreham Airshow when the crash occurred, the third - and by far the most deadly - at the event since 2007.

The Hawker Hunter plane, of a type developed by Britain in the 1950s, struck several cars on the major road next to Shoreham airport near Brighton, where the show was taking place.

Hill was seriously injured but survived. Eleven people, some of them in their cars or on the roadside, were killed.

"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," Simon Ringrose, the reviewing lawyer, was cited as saying by in a statement from Britain's Crown Prosecution Service.

He said Hill would also be charged with endangering an aircraft and would appear before the courts "in due course". 

The crash prompted Britain to announce new safety restrictions on airshows. 

Reuters