A pilot ejecting during an airshow in Idaho in 2003 Photograph: Rex FeaturesA passenger in a fighter plane in South Africa last week accidentally activated the ejector seat but escaped unharmed. Was he just incredibly lucky?
Of all the things that you hope you wouldn't be able do by accident, pulling an ejector seat handle would have to be up there. This is what happened to one man last week in South Africa. He was being taken for a ride in a plane from the Silver Falcons air display team, when he was thrown forward during some aerobatics. At that point, he reportedly accidentally pulled the black-and- yellow handle between his legs and was blasted through the Perspex canopy 100 metres into the sky. His emergency parachute opened and he floated back to the ground unharmed.
To the untrained eye, ejector seats don't look much changed since the second world war, when they started to be used; they resemble something you could have made yourself from your office chair and a couple of fireworks. "Actually, modern seats are very sophisticated," says Ray Thilthorpe, a former RAF pilot and instructor who now runs air shows. "The seat has all sorts of life-support systems – it will give you oxygen if you're at a high altitude, an accelerometer, which prevents the parachute from opening if you are going too fast, a dinghy and life jacket if you land in the sea. There are lots of things going on."
Thilthorpe says that to activate it requires a deliberate and strong pull upwards. At the time of writing, it wasn't clear why the passenger on the plane last week had pulled the handle – a spokesman for the South African air force said the flight had been cleared and procedures were adhered to. Maybe he just wanted to get out of there. - The Guardian,
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