Jaguar seat ejects after landing, IAF pilot safe
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 8
An Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot had a narrow escape when his seat ejected after he had landed his Jaguar fighter jet at the Jamnagar air base in Gujarat this morning.
The plane was rolling after landing at the air base when the seat ejected. The pilot-less plane continued to roll on the runaway for over 100m before veering off onto softer ground.
The pilot is safe. A Court of Inquiry (CoI) has been ordered to find out how and why the pilot seat got ejected as this procedure is meant only for emergency situations. The CoI will find out if there was a snag in the seat that triggered “auto-ejection”.
When an ejection is done mid-flight, the seat has a mechanism that ejects the pilot some 100 feet above the plane. If such an ejection is on ground, the pilot can get seriously injured if the parachute does not open. Normally, a pilot has to pull an “ejection handle” to get ejected.
Today’s incident comes just three days after another Jaguar fighter jet crashed in Kutch in which senior IAF pilot Air Commodore Sanjai Chauhan, commander of the Jamnagar base was killed.
