It is little more than dumb luck, a freak occurance—something agreed on by the men involved themselves, not just military historians—that three Curtiss "Jenny"s from the 1st Provisional Aero Squadron discover and attack Villa’s with aerial gunfire (the term “strafing” would not actually enter the english lexicon for several years).
The action is clumsy at best, and not without losses—one of the Jennys crashes during the attack, and a second when attempting to return to base—but the results are no less for it: Pancho Villa is dead.
So, what happens next? Politically, militarily, and historically?
The course of Mexican history wouldn’t have changed very much. Pancho’s bid for control of the revolution ended when he was defeated by Alvaro Obregón in 1915. However, he likely would not have been remembered as well in Mexico were it not for the Punitive Expedition and Pancho’s ability to elude both Meixcan and U.S. forces. Like it or not, the Punitive Expedition was a spectacular failure for the Unites States and elevated Pancho’s status in the eyes of many Mexicans.
My wife’s grandfather flew air support in the 1916 Punitive Expedition. He flew one of those old Curtiss Jennys. He also did Border Patrol work in the same timeframe - those two are related, because the Border Patrol had the job of preventing banditos from coming across the border from Mexico and wreaking havoc on the small US farms just across the border. I got the chance to have several conversations with him about this while he was still alive, and what I remember most vividly is his description of just how grim it was back then, flying these crappy airplanes over so much open desert land. Most of them didn’t survive for long.