That feeling of being a human Pop-Tart.
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IIRC correctly from reading the original article a while back, his ejector bolt was faulty or not primed. Another SNAFU (but a lucky one) in this sorry tale.
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Not necessarily. Having flown in F-16s and F-15s, I can tell you that that ejection system has 3 settings in the back seat" Aft - Norm - Solo. Solo is obvious…keeps the back seat in the jet when the front seater punches. Switch in AFT - either cockpit pulls the handle, the seats will sequence back to front (back seat leaves first). In NORM, if the back seater pulls the handle, only he goes, and if the front seater pulls the handle the seats will sequence back to front.
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Holy shit! That is incredible.
Strictly following the safety procedure, [the pilot] set his transponder on 7700, avoided flying over inhabited areas, dumped fuel and landed successfully back at the airbase. He then evacuated the cockpit by himself, fearing that the ejection seat could activate at any time.
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Yep, staff is always responsible for the PPE of activity participants. You double check that shit every single time. Otherwise you’ve got ropes course people falling out of their harnesses, roller coaster riders flying out of the cars, and shit like this.
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Absolutely not the guy’s fault.
The pilot should have thoroughly explained to him what to do in an emergency and warned him about not touching things as part of his legally required safety briefing. And he should have been monitoring his passenger’s level of comfort/terror.
Like every aviation accident, there was an event cascade of fuck-ups, but the buck really stops with the pilot.
The article is kind of flippant but the aviation industry takes stuff like that seriously.
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I am reminded of this passage from Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (1979):
In time, the Navy would compile statistics showing that for a career Navy pilot, i.e., one who intended to keep flying for twenty years as [Pete] Conrad did, there was a 23 percent probability that he would die in an aircraft accident. This did not even include combat deaths, since the military did not classify death in combat as accidental. Furthermore, there was a better than even chance, a 56 percent probability, to be exact, that at some point a career Navy pilot would have to eject from his aircraft and attempt to come down by parachute. In the era of jet fighters, ejection meant being exploded out of the cockpit by a nitroglycerine charge, like a human cannonball. The ejection itself was so hazardous—men lost knees, arms, and their lives on the rim of the cockpit or had the skin torn off their faces when they hit the “wall” of air outside—that many pilots chose to wrestle their aircraft to the ground rather than try it … and died that way instead.
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Did you read the post? It’s about relying on the parachute because you need to get out of a disabled aircraft. Voluntarily flinging yourself out of a perfectly functional aircraft then claiming a parachute “saved” your life is a different thing. Caterpillar club members would’ve died, through no fault of their own, without their parachutes. I bet it feels different.
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But then fighters aren’t designed to take passengers. Everybody in that aircraft is supposed to get months or years of training. The ejector seat is there for a reason. Best solution I can see is don’t take paying passengers in an aircraft like that.
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Look, if GWB can ride shotgun in a plane with out pulling the ejector lever, so can anyone else…
(Yes, I know he used to be a pilot, but my point stands.)
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Now that’s social distancing!
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I recall reading a story once about a co-pilot, or perhaps passenger, standing on the wing of a fighter jet that had landed and reaching back in to grab his duffel bag. The strap of the bag caught on the ejection lever, and when he yanked on it, the seat ejected, tearing his arm off.
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In his book Carrying The Fire, Mike Collins discusses how the Apollo 11 crew seated themselves inside the command module before takeoff. Neil Armstrong accidentally got a strap from his pressure suit looped around a hand controller. The launch escape system is triggered by twisting that controller. Collins pointed out the risk and Armstrong secured that loop so all was good but it would have been a quick ending to the mission.
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Haha! You think there was material evidence?
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At least he was trying to maintain six feet distance from the pilot.
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This was my opinion of the givers of this “gift.” What will they do for an encore, set up a surprise party for elderly cardiac patients? This leaves me with so many questions.
I once bought a drag racing experience for my ex - because that was something he enjoyed. My friends and family wouldn’t make the mistake of getting me a similar gift, since I’m risk-averse. It’s a shame that the passenger didn’t say no instead of going along with this. Did his former co-workers not really know him at all or secretly hate him? Was he the evil manager? If I were him and those former colleagues offered me a casserole during my recovery, I wouldn’t eat it.
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Came to post this. Left satisfied.
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So? He probably has another 20 or 30 more years to go.
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I think sometimes presents are intended to teach the recipient a lesson.
But its just how it is. Some people don’t like surprises, or heights.
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