Tejas pilot ejects before crash: How ejection seats in military aircraft work

Here is how they work.

The bailout

The pulling of the ejection handle sets off a chain of events lasting 4-5 seconds, which is expected to culminate with the ejecting passenger moved a safe distance away from the doomed aircraft, and descending at a controlled pace with the help of a parachute.

First, a small explosive charge under the seat is activated, which catapults the seat, with the occupant strapped in, into the air. The seat is mounted on guiding rails, which help it to maintain its direction.

However, for the seat (and its occupant) to escape the aircraft, the canopy above the seat must be removed, or the person ejecting will have their neck snapped in two — like Goose in the movie Top Gun (1986). This is done using rocket thrusters which push the whole structure away, or low-grade explosives, which shatter it.

Once out in the open, rocket boosters attached to the bottom and back of the seat fire up, putting distance between the aircraft and its ejecting occupants.

A violent process

The bailout is an extremely violent process — almost every ejectee suffers from some injury or the other. According to some estimates, about 20-30 per cent of ejectees experience some kind of spinal injury as a result. This is because of the strength of the forces that act upon the human body during the process.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that “the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration”. The acceleration felt due to the force of gravity on Earth’s surface is 1G (9.806 m/s2). Extreme fighter jet manoeuvres can result in the pilot feeling a crippling 8-10 Gs of acceleration.

Ejections, albeit for a very limited period, result in up to 20 Gs. In other words, during an ejection, the ejectee experiences up to 20 times the force of their body weight. This can break bones and rip cartilage, and pilots have reportedly lost height due to the compression of the spine.

Different modes of aircraft ejections. Source: B A Parate, “Science And Technology of Aircraft Seat Ejection: Advanced Concepts”, 2022

This is not all. Pilots also have to ensure that while being catapulted off the aircraft, their body is as streamlined as possible. Any protruding appendage, say a jutting out knee, will be shattered to smithereens upon even light contact with anything in its way.

Pilots go through rigorous training to prepare for ejections, and anyone who ever steps inside a fighter aircraft must also go through some basic training. Most importantly, they have to be at peak fitness to withstand the physical forces acting upon them during the event.

The descent

After the ejectee gets to a safe distance from the aircraft, their seat falls off and the parachute is deployed. This is supposed to happen automatically, but pilots also have the ability to manually deploy the chute in case of a malfunction.

Crucially, parachutes are not supposed to be deployed at a very high altitude. Doing so risks the person freezing to death, or going hypoxic from the lack of oxygen, or both. For higher altitude ejections, a smaller parachute, known as the drogue, is first deployed in order to cut the speed of descent and stabilise the fall.

Once the parachute is deployed, the pilot has to ensure that its cords do not get entangled, and then find a safe spot to land. Survival kits aboard aircraft comprise a life preserver unit (for water landings), some first aid and food, a flare gun, and a knife.