Cptnchia
Dissatisfied Customer
My dad was in the AF in the 50s. He bailed out of two different fighters in his career. One an F86, one an F100. Back then it was, "Get the crack out, now!!" Planes were cheap, pilots were expensive.
Ex-Walmart CEO pulls chute
- Thread starter ComplexHiAv8r
- Start date
USMCmech
Well-Known Member
The structure of the airplane does a lot to absorb the impact, but it's not a gentle touch down.
More this
Not so much this
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USMCmech
Well-Known Member
Looking at that picture, and assuming he was at fairly low altitude, then pulling the chute was absolutely the right call.
gne in prog
Well-Known Member
that was after a mid-air with a tow plane.
http://ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20100204X45658&ntsbno=CEN10FA115B&akey=2
T/O w/FSII
Well-Known Member
The cirri has a high approach speed for a little single, has tiny tires with tiny brakes and is made of plastic.
The chute wins when over anything other then "perfect"
The chute wins when over anything other then "perfect"
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Those attitudes continue to persist today. The #1 factor in fatalities for guys in ejection-seat aircraft continues to be "delayed decision to eject". It is a hard, hard decision to pull those handles. I know several guys who punched out of F-15s, F-16s, and T-38s, and to a man, they all described a time-distorted thought process they mentally went through prior to pulling the handles in which they wrestled with ejecting, and really, really, really didn't want to do it even when they logically knew it was the proper and most safe thing to do.
Human psychology just naturally makes us resist ejecting from an airplane. As pilots, we:
- Don't want to give up...we want to naturally save the aircraft, for a variety of reasons
-- It is "admitting defeat"; we worry about taking the easy way out, about getting out too early from a situation that later analysis will tell us we could have recovered from
-- Financial: we know it will result in the destruction of the aircraft
-- Professional: we naturally fear that something we did wrong led to the situation requiring ejection, and we naturally desire to correct that error
- The cockpit is a warm, calm, natural place for us to be; ejection is loud, can result in injury, and it is really cold and uncomfortable (possibly painful) in a parachute harness
In the AF, there are regulation-mandated minimum ejection altitudes for if the aircraft is controllable vs uncontrollable. The specific altitudes depend on the capabilities of the seat (for example, in the F-15E, the uncontrollable min ejection altitude was 10,000 feet, while in the T-38C with the old seat it was 15,000 feet), and yet in case after case after case, guys go sailing through those altitudes trying to save the ship. Sometimes guys die as a result of delaying that decision. Sometimes guys face professional repercussions if they survive.
In the ejection seat world, this attitude hasn't sorted itself out after dozens of generations of pilots and nearly constant education and refresher training on the subject.
ComplexHiAv8r
Well-Known Member
The seats (at least in mine) were rated at 26G.USMCmech said:
Murdoughnut
Well sized member
Hi, welcome to America. How long are you here for?
Murdoughnut
Well sized member
Do you think uncertainty about where your plane is going to end up plays into it as well - at least if you're in a moderately populated area?
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
It depends a lot on circumstance.
There's no consideration in any of the training or procedure that says, "if it looks like the airplane is going to go into a populated area, try and fly it away and ride it in to minimize innocent casualties or collateral damage." In fact, this would be negative training, since it goes directly against the minimum ejection altitude guidance and other parts of the habit patterns you want combat aviators to act on in combat.
Obviously, just as humans, this does go into the decisionmaking matrix regardless of regulations or training. I've only had two circumstances where I thought I was going to have to eject. Both times it crossed my mind where the jet would be landing as I considered the possible decisions and outcomes. Nobody wants to hurt people or destroy property under any circumstance, and I have no doubt that it is part of the thought process.
Personally, though, I don't believe that this consideration weighs on a pilot's mind more than the aforementioned "I think I can save it" factors. Whenever I read a story about a guy who rode it in, I do a silent internal eye roll whenever someone invariably brings up that he "heroically" stayed with the jet to make sure it didn't hit other people. If that were true -- if he/she had the ability to control where the jet was going -- they wouldn't have impacted the dirt in the first place, nor would they have had the need to eject at all. More likely, they were task saturated with trying to save the airplane, and avoiding dwellings or people was a collateral result of whatever they were doing to try and recover.
hook_dupin
Well-Known Member
There are some cases where I think "wait and pull" is the right answer. Fire in the cabin, a spin recovery, and over-water engine out come to mind.
"DUDE! What's mine say?"
NickH
Uber Driver
Maybe. Of course, the minimum deployment altitude is 1000', which should have been more than enough to make it to that beautiful flat paved area bottom left of the picture. Which might still exist, the picture, of course, not being real time. Second guessing is easy.
Nailed it!
There's an intruder in your home with a gun, but it's an open-carry state, is he simply lost or is he a threat?
