Ah, a classic "he-said he-said" dispute. Especially in an area as gray as spawnkilling from a plane, there is no winner to be had here. Only two people know the truth (and perhaps a third if he was watching really closely); the rest of us are clueless to THAT game despite who we think we support; and the two people involved LIKELY have differing memories on what exactly happened.
That last part is true. Really. Like I always tell my kids, we are each the WORST observer of ourselves. Now place ourselves in a game with limited senses and vision, and there's a lot more room for self-observation error.
This is why we ask for screenshots of everything possible. But in a spawnkilling situation, even screenshots have trouble capturing the whole story.
Moving on.
I'm not 100% certain that everyone has brakes-immunity, and I don't know if the immunity if created from the victim's or the killer's software release, or a combination. All I know is that there are enough reports of the function working properly, that I think it is available to everyone if you have any of the recent releases.
If you don't have one of the first three starter planes, having brakes on and full throttle for a few seconds will set you up for a catapult launch. Standing on the brakes and looking around will allow you to time your brake release. This has been talked about extensively in threads. If your game has this immunity, and you have a decent ranked plane, you can get up to maneuvering speed just seconds after takeoff. At that point, if you get killed anyway, then it's just a mismatch of skills, not a spawnkilling unfairness.
Where spawnkilling IS unfair, is when picking on a noob who doesn't know this stuff, or who has a slower plane that doesn't jump off the line in a pre-revved takeoff. For them, getting to maneuvering speed takes more time, many seconds instead a few seconds. I think most savvy flyers are aware of who is who in a game, having checked the player board. So a savvy player who is shooting at noobs ON THE RUNWAY is being a jerk. A savvy player who is shooting at an experienced pilot on the runway is looking for an easy kill, but won't get it if the pilot has a good plane and some knowledge. If he gets that easy kill, it's good manners to then back off a bit and let the pilot fly more the next time. But that's just my view of manners.
So there's no resolution here. Shake hands, learn some skills if there's something to be learned, learn some manners if there's something to be learned, and move on.
What does seem silly are the Upstanding Citizen reports. Come on, we're talking about Allan and Stuart here; I couldn't pick two pilots who are more upstanding than these two. Do we think that if we vote enough times that one will win? I'm sure they each appreciate the support, but really the only relevant input would be from someone who SAW what happened. The rest of us only wind up contributing to the political wind and popularity contest, which this should not be.
Manfred