The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

Honest question.

Why don't single seat, single engine civilian aircraft have ejector seats? Or atleast a system to bail if they fail?

Cost

If its cost, why not have it as an option.

Cars have options.

Cost and technical/training issues, presumably. Both in terms of manufacture and certification (which can be ruinously expensive!).

Now, you can buy parachutes, but you're not given instruction on how to use them AFAIK - and you have to bail out manually.

edited 2nd Dec '15 1:50:00 PM by Flanker66

Weight is also a factor too, I suspect. I expect that ejector seats are hardly light or small — you'd hardly get one in a Tiger Moth...

edited 2nd Dec '15 1:54:41 PM by Greenmantle

And civilian airplanes aren't expected to be swatted or drop out of the sky.

Unless they are Malaysian Airliners.

Oh, that was a low blow.

The technology exists to make really light weight ejector seats for lightweight single and twin engine planes, at least the technology is there to make the materials you need to build them out of, and the computing capability to design it as well. It's just that those have never been brought together as there hasn't been perceived need for civilian use of ejector seats.

And I think the thinking has been kind of like the mentality the British Royal Flying Corps' wankstains in charge exemplified in WW 1 - "screw you buddy, if your plane is on fire you're supposed to land it or burn like a good pilot", only transferred across to the civilian side of things when the military got much smarter. There are some civvie flight crews who operate with parachutes, but most don't.

At the moment I don't think the technology has advanced far enough to give every civvie in a passenger jet a parachute. Weight issues and that kind of thing. Ejector seats for hundreds of people per plane would be prohibitively expensive in terms of weight and cost grounds.

So should we try and turn that removable cabin concept that Airbus is developing into an Escape Pod?

That actualy seems fairly viable considering they have parachutes for small planes now.

Hmm. If it's doable, yep. But how are you going to land it? It's a huge thing - I shudder to think how many parachutes it would take to land the compartment from something like an A-380 safely? Or indeed retro rockets and the like.

You dont need to land it comfortably, just surviably.

That gives you a bit more leway.

Maybe airbags would help?

Is it even worth the costs? Civil aviation accidents tend to be quite rare and usually the ones that end up with dead people are result from pilot error or stupidity.

Also even in a perfect ejection the forces involved are enough to seriously fuck up the subject's body.

Due to lax positioning of the pilot and passenger during the ejection, their bodies have successfully been ejected. The pilot's arm and the passenger's head however failed to exit the cockpit.

Heavy aircraft manage to make ejection seats work despite the possibility of the occupant unbuckling and walking away, just look at the B-52, with ejection seats for all crew except for the tailgunner back in the bad old days when he sat in the tail section.

If you're curious, the tail gunner would eject the aft end of the airplane, make sure his parachute was strapped on, and take two steps to depart the plane. Since the entire aircraft is already ahead of him, the ejection seat is pointless (primary purpose of the ejection seat: Getting the pilot away before the plane catches up with him).

Which is probably another reason most smaller/lighter aircraft lack ejection seats: They provide no particular benefit in an aircraft whose entire performance envelope is in the "safe to just fall out of the plane" window. The horizontal stabilizer on a Cessna 182 might be problematic, but at least it's not pulling 500 knots.

Also consider that ejection seats have some interesting safety issues, given that they have a high-powered rocket motor which is designed to fire off very quickly. There have been stories of ground crew getting hurt or killed when an ejection seat on a parked plane misfired due to the safety not being set properly.

There is a parachute for the whole plane, but it's an issue of training and money. And by whole plane, I mean small general aviation aircraft. They are small enough for the 'chute to work.

With proper training, unless you're shot at or fly into bad weather, you can crashland a small plane and walk away.

Fatal crashes usually occur from disorientation, bad weather or mechanical problems.

Small craft are at the mercy of the wind, in bad weather an ejection seat won't save you.

Parachutes can fail, sometimes epicly, again there is no guarantee.

edited 2nd Dec '15 6:17:01 PM by TairaMai

Parachutes are also one of the worst things to have in the event of a water hazard. Drowning hazard.

If I was the pilot of a light plane and that fucker was on fire, a fire that isn't much less dangerous nowadays than it was during the First World War, I'd want to get the fuck out of that light plane as fast as possible. Because screw trying to land a plane that's turned into a roman candle. That's just asking to be turned into an image you find in a plastic surgeon's textbook of people who've had their faces melted off. I've seen those - they ain't at all pretty.

The BBC: Syria conflict: Half of German Tornado jets 'not airworthy' (From Tuesday; also X-posted to the Arab Spring thread)

Those 66 are the survivors from an original fleet of over 300 Tornados.

edited 3rd Dec '15 12:43:22 PM by Greenmantle

So is the German military made up of showpieces then?

It sounds like more and more of their stuff doesn't actually work in combat and is there to fit NATO requirements.

Coming from the who bought service rifles that melt because no one though they'd be used, are you surprised the German military isn't in good shape?

, In an off-topic, sometimes you guys' avatars have similar features so I get confused. XP

So the idea of flying aircraft carrier has been experimented around with, without much results.

That got me wondering; would there be any value in flying UAV carriers, assuming there is a reliable way to recover them?