I've not read the rest of this thread yet - there seem to have been some lengthy posts overnight - but to address this one point of Alain's ...Piston Broke wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2017 12:09 amUnless you are doing something stupid why would you you need to bang out of a well maintained aircraft. Yes the aircraft has the same performance envelope but unless you are pushing the envelope you should need to eject.quicksilver-wsr wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:19 pm I know, but I wasn't referring to swept wings - I was referring to bang-seats.
Alain said that in his opinion, "all non-military craft should have ejector seats disabled". Whereas I think it's better to have active seats, because even JPs were fitted with them as standard for a very good reason.
'My' JP happened to be in civilian ownership, but its performance envelope was the same as it had been in military use. I think anyone who deactivates the seats in such a type out of choice needs his head examining.
Nigel
The problem is that fast jets don't just put their crews in life-threatening situations when they are "doing something stupid". There can be technical malfunctions on aircraft - particularly on the rather more complex aircraft that fast jets are - and these can occur at any time. They may very well be no fault of the crew that's aboard the plane that day. It can be something someone else has done wrong at some point beforehand that has gone undetected, or it can be a simple matter of bad luck that a vital component or system has fails in flight.
An on-board fire due to a fuel leak, a critical control-system failure, a windscreen bird-strike causing loss of visibility and even possibly partial pilot incapacitation. These are all examples - out of many - that can pose a direct threat to life, where you are probably going to die unless you can get away from the aircraft.
My point was simple - although you may not agree with it - that, given a choice on a fast-jet flight, I'd rather be in a live seat than an inert one. Because it gives you one extra option, and that can be the difference between life and death.
Nigel