2 people safely eject from jet that later crashed during Thunder Over Michigan air show 8/13/2023

Skåning said:
Is there a weird eject envelope that may have been pressing for them to bail sooner, rather than later?
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Depends on the seat, different seats have different parameters. There’d be charts for that in the flight manual materials. Whether one or both of the persons onboard were aware of such, isn’t known to me. It’s another valid question to ask both of them.
 
MikeD said:
Temporal distortion is a thing. Have known a few of my own cohorts who have ejected from the aircraft and either can’t remember the entire sequence, or don’t remember initiating it and only remember being in the parachute, after last being in the aircraft. Regardless, the questions I posed are ones that have to be asked and understood, in order to paint the proper picture.

But I’m curious as to who the back seater is, and why he was there in the first place. If the aircraft was doing an aerial demonstration of some kind.
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Apparently the MiG-23 requires both seats to be occupied for the ejection system to work. Not sure who it was in the back seat, but he/she was at least "mandatory ballast" for the flight in that regard.
 
guywhoflies said:
Apparently the MiG-23 requires both seats to be occupied for the ejection system to work. Not sure who it was in the back seat, but he/she was at least "mandatory ballast" for the flight in that regard.
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Which I’m sure the FAA will take an interest in with regards to persons onboard. As for the hot seats, will also be interested to see if that was part of his LOA granting to fly this jet.
 
I have a little experience working on civilian owned jets equipped with ejection seats (US products) and, as I've stated before, I hated it. Even the seats in a T-38 or F-5 are complicated mechanisms that rely on multiple explosive devices to do many things either simultaneously or in a timed sequence. I was once asked if I would ever go for a ride in a T-38 and my answer was if it was being operated by the USAF yes, otherwise no. It may sound odd from someone who spent a large amount of my youth working on WWII warbirds but I don't think ejection seats have any place in civil aviation. The amount of work required to properly maintain them is huge and, while our military has seemingly endless amounts of money, I suspect even the very rich folks who own these aircraft are doing just enough to stay legal and not much more. Keeping spare parts for these seats (initiators, rockets) requires special permits from the alphabet agencies and a "vault". I have no idea how anyone can effectively maintain Russian seats here in the US.
 
knot4u said:
I have a little experience working on civilian owned jets equipped with ejection seats (US products) and, as I've stated before, I hated it. Even the seats in a T-38 or F-5 are complicated mechanisms that rely on multiple explosive devices to do many things either simultaneously or in a timed sequence. I was once asked if I would ever go for a ride in a T-38 and my answer was if it was being operated by the USAF yes, otherwise no. It may sound odd from someone who spent a large amount of my youth working on WWII warbirds but I don't think ejection seats have any place in civil aviation. The amount of work required to properly maintain them is huge and, while our military has seemingly endless amounts of money, I suspect even the very rich folks who own these aircraft are doing just enough to stay legal and not much more. Keeping spare parts for these seats (initiators, rockets) requires special permits from the alphabet agencies and a "vault". I have no idea how anyone can effectively maintain Russian seats here in the US.
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Even in military, there are specialized egress (seat) and life support (parachute in seat) personnel whose sole purpose is to deal with these. Much more than an average A&P would ever work with on a day to day basis.

That said, with the number of L-39, etc, eastern bloc jets in the USA, there are some former eastern bloc mechs here in the USA who can maintain them, but they are few and it will cost mega $$$.
 
MikeD said:
Even in military, there are specialized egress (seat) and life support (parachute in seat) personnel whose sole purpose is to deal with these. Much more than an average A&P would ever work with on a day to day basis.

That said, with the number of L-39, etc, eastern bloc jets in the USA, there are some former eastern bloc mechs here in the USA who can maintain them, but they are few and it will cost mega $$$.
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I know. I don't for reasons. I'm a less than average A/P, just ask anyone around here. LOL.
 
knot4u said:
I know. I don't for reasons. I'm a less than average A/P, just ask anyone around here. LOL.
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I mean, the military just has the $$$ to have separate people for everything maintenance related: airframe, engines, hydro/pneumatic, radars, avionics, weapons/fire control, egress, and life support. All separate people. For a Part 91 operation, would be cost prohibitive.

Lots of mil warbirds out there flying with fixed cold seats. Not sure I’d like that either, with the number of things that can go wrong. But….hot seats get not only FAA interest, but ATF interest also, in addition to the cost of Mx.
 
MikeD said:
I mean, the military just has the $$$ to have separate people for everything maintenance related: airframe, engines, hydro/pneumatic, radars, avionics, weapons/fire control, egress, and life support. All separate people. For a Part 91 operation, would be cost prohibitive.

Lots of mil warbirds out there flying with fixed cold seats. Not sure I’d like that either, with the number of things that can go wrong. But….hot seats get not only FAA interest, but ATF interest also, in addition to the cost of Mx.
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I think you and I are on the same page, the first time I helped take a T-38 apart it gave me bad vibes. The way it's built is brilliant and easy to maintain as long as you're working in its intended environment with the equipment, money and knowledge required, I wasn't and although we had a lot of surplus stuff we were not the USAF. You probably know better than I do but I once asked "What happens if there's a hydraulic failure?" and the answer was punch out. So you have people scavenging the internet or any other sources for airworthy parts and the only option if some $4 part decides it doesn't want to play is to either crash or jump out. Like I said, Nope.
 
knot4u said:
I think you and I are on the same page, the first time I helped take a T-38 apart it gave me bad vibes. The way it's built is brilliant and easy to maintain as long as you're working in its intended environment with the equipment, money and knowledge required, I wasn't and although we had a lot of surplus stuff we were not the USAF. You probably know better than I do but I once asked "What happens if there's a hydraulic failure?" and the answer was punch out. So you have people scavenging the internet or any other sources for airworthy parts and the only option if some $4 part decides it doesn't want to play is to either crash or jump out. Like I said, Nope.
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Agreed. It’s a lot of money and time to maintain these things correctly. The last part being the important one. Heck, even CalFire OV-10s don’t have hot seats, and that’s a state organization that doesn’t want to have to deal with the cost and complexity of maintaining those. The average private operator would be driven nearly bankrupt.
 
MikeD said:
Agreed. It’s a lot of money and time to maintain these things correctly. The last part being the important one. Heck, even CalFire OV-10s don’t have hot seats, and that’s a state organization that doesn’t want to have to deal with the cost and complexity of maintaining those. The average private operator would be driven nearly bankrupt.
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There are foreign Air Forces flying our old aircraft who abandoned keeping working seats.

The really scary examples are the ones that just copy/pasted our checklists not seeing the fundamental logic fail in that decision chain.


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We have several jet fighters, jet trainers types at Chino. They have a full time crew of mechanics that work on the aircraft. Even the P-51's, P-38's, P-40 types have full time staff.

The owners of foreign jet aircraft pay current and retired foreign crew chiefs to fly to the US every couple of months to provide their "expertise". What they really provide is a bunch of stolen parts and they are paid well for them.
 
fholbert said:
I have a retired Navy friend (F-18, F-5) who flies a F-21 Kfir out of Point Magu for a civilian contractor. I know when they make a run on a Navy ship they often go supersonic. I'm pretty sure they maintain the seats. No?
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Some of the bigger companies that have larger government contracts do have maintained seats, such as ATAC. F-21s and some of the other ones like A-4s, do have hot seats. And have been used during emergencies. But with their govt contracts, they are getting the $$$ needed to do that kind of maintenance.

Private owned one-off jets, not likely as much

The F-21 that crashed at NFL while trying multiple approaches in low Wx, the pilot didn’t attempt ejection after running out of fuel. The A-4 takeoff accident at LSV, the pilot successfully ejected.

.
 
fholbert said:
We have several jet fighters, jet trainers types at Chino. They have a full time crew of mechanics that work on the aircraft. Even the P-51's, P-38's, P-40 types have full time staff.

The owners of foreign jet aircraft pay current and retired foreign crew chiefs to fly to the US every couple of months to provide their "expertise". What they really provide is a bunch of stolen parts and they are paid well for them.
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That's some pretty scandalous stuff you just posted. The internet is forever.
 
thevideographer said:
So the plane was controllable, and the back seater just had no regard at all for the lives of anyone on the ground?
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fholbert said:
Bet that's the last time they fly together talk.
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I think it’s far, far too early to say this confidently. It’s still very possible that the backseater recognized what was going on while they had the luxury of not being the one flying the aircraft and saved both their lives by pulling the handle. Gotta wait for the investigation .
 
Inverted said:
Yes, in fact they were damn near out of the envelope when they ejected.
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I'm quite positive the MiG-23 envelope is not what any western pilot is currently used to, probably not even our former A-6 driver.

slightly related aside, I wouldn't have gotten in that backseat for $10M (or the front seat for that matter). F'ing death trap, these guys are lucky
 
///AMG said:
I'm quite positive the MiG-23 envelope is not what any western pilot is currently used to, probably not even our former A-6 driver.

slightly related aside, I wouldn't have gotten in that backseat for $10M (or the front seat for that matter). F'ing death trap, these guys are lucky
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For a Prowler pilot, that 1.2 seconds must have felt like forever.
 
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