What does ejecting from a plane do to your body?

In TV and movies, a fighter pilot ejecting from their jet comes across as a cut-and-dry procedure. In reality, the process is complicated, violent, and leaves most pilots with severe injuries. About 20% to 30% of fighter pilots experience some sort of spinal fracture as a result.



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Firing of ejection gun: spinal injuries. Entering airflow: wind blast may cause lung damage; seat tumbles at variable speed, which may be as high as 180 rpm. (All seats have a drogue parachute or deployable aerodynamic panels to prevent tumbling); flail injuries to extremities. Parachute deployment: snatch injuries.

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Ejection is an important way for pilots to escape planes in case of emergency, but the incidence of injury accompanying ejection escape is also very high[1-3].

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In our evaluation we found that ejection seat evacuation is associated with a relatively high incidence of spinal injuries. Overall, 56.3% of aircrew members in our evaluation had some form of spine injuries, such as a contusion. In total, 33.0% even experienced a spine fracture.

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The turbulent process of ejecting puts pilots at serious risk of injury. Once those rockets fire under the seat, they blow a person up and out of the cockpit with enough force to seriously bruise both shoulders on the harness straps and possibly break collarbones.

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There's no fixed number – each individual is unique, as is the ejection that they endure. After ejection, a pilot will be given a full medical evaluation and it is down to that medical professional to advise whether it is recommended that the pilot continues to fly or not.

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Not true. I flew with a pilot that had ejected three times. Weirdly, I was with him (in another A-7) on two of those occasions. All three ejections occurred at slow speeds.

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If the pilot needs to warn you that you're going to have to eject in the near future, he will use the word “eject,” as in, “Hey, get ready, we are going to have to eject in about 30 seconds.” If things go horribly wrong and you need to blow out of the ship immediately, the command is, “bailout! bailout! bailout!”

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The Air Force Safety Center carefully tracks how often pilots pass out, and in the last fiscal year—from October 1, 2018 to September, 30, 2019—there were 12 incidents, a small increase from past years. The 10-year average, according to the Safety Center, is about seven GLOC incidents per year.

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Six pilots have ejected at speeds exceeding 700 knots (1,300 km/h; 810 mph). The highest altitude at which a Martin-Baker seat was deployed was 57,000 ft (17,400 m) (from a Canberra bomber in 1958).

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If they were unable to make contact with anyone on board, they may attempt to take control of the plane remotely using automated systems such as GPS navigation or remote piloting technology. If both pilots died during flight, the plane would be in a state of autopilot.

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Broadly and generally, the reasons a pilot may leave the flight deck in flight can be grouped into two categories: first, physiological breaks – restroom, stretch, or required rest on longer routes; and second, operational breaks – handling a passenger, aircraft, or crew issue that requires the pilot to leave the ...

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