Are you PENTAX MAN ?

Hoods do make a difference, especially with modern zooms that have high numbers of elements. Every glass/air surface is a potential reflection, even with SMC coating it all adds up.

Many DA lenses come with hoods anyway, which is great as it saves buying the separately. In the past I would buy the proper hoods and it was an expensive business.

The added bonus of lens protector can make the difference between a lens being damaged by a knock and not.

That's me, and my old DL2 in a rare 'hood-free' moment. I assume the hood had popped off in the bag during the three hour crawl through lava caves which preceded this shot

Perhaps the man at the airshow was also in too much of a hurry to rettach the hood.

The Kit lens with the K-m comes without a hood, so maybe he never had a hood to use in the first place?

at first I was sure that was me...
but then I realized he has yellow hair, mine is black and brown...
then I realized he's using a kit lens with no hood...sadly I do not use the kit lens.
then I realized his lens is pointing slightly downward...at my height that rarely ever happens when I'm behind other people...
then I realized he's in the UK....
so nope, wasn't me.

I don't think Canon lenses come with a hood as standard .. I may be wrong though.

I think Canons come with a free hoodie!

maybe I'm just not very picky but I've only very rarely been able to get noticeable flare or contrast loss out of an SMC lens unless it has a filter on. Even when it does happen a hand is much more portable than a lens hood IMO.

I use the hood on my Tamron 300 and there it certainly makes a difference, but very rarely does it prove necessary on my Pentax lenses

It depends on how the light is - shooting against the light will show the most benefit. You can tell the difference when shooting with the non-SMC Takumar-A and Pentax-A lenses.