Germany Suspends Eurofighter Operations

[wktaylor]

Germany, Spain, Brittain, Italy, Austria and Saudi Arabia have all initiated emergency groundings of their EUROFighters due to "fix" Martin-Baker Mk.16A ejection seat discrepancies.

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By ALBRECHT MÜLLER Published: 16 Sep 2010 14:18 http://www.defensenews.com/story.php...69&c=EUR&s=AIR








BONN, Germany - The German Air Force on Sept. 15 suspended indefinitely all flying operations with its Eurofighter jets because of technical problems with the plane's ejection seats, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

The Financial Times Deutschland newspaper reported on Sept. 16 that this action was taken after the crash of a two-seat Eurofighter at the end of August in Spain. Experts suspect that a bird strike had destroyed important sensors.

While the Spanish pilot escaped successfully using the ejection seat, the parachute had become disconnected from the seat of the Saudi co-pilot, who died.

All 55 German planes are grounded until further notice. In the meantime, older F-4 Phantom fighter jets, which are being replaced by the Eurofighter, will again carry out the air policing of skies over southern Germany

[HalcyonDays]

The UK did not at any time stop flying of its Typhoons on essential QRA missions. On September 20 it was cleared for all missions.

[justLOT787]

Time to work some bugs out with the ejection seat. Better be safe then sorry!!

[wktaylor]

If I remember correctly an F-15 experienced a failed ejection in the early 80s... young pilot "road-it-in" while talking with the SOF looking for any way-out.

The failure was traced to a restrictive "kink" in one of the ejection sequencing (pressure transfer) tubes.

The Pilot pulled the handle, the initiating cartridge fired, the line over-pressured and then ruptured at the kink and the canopy failed to jettison... so the sequence aborted (canopy movement was mandatory to initiate the final stage of ejecting the pilot). Unfortunately there was no secondary sequence that kicked-in to proceed with ejection thru the canopy: seat didn't have a penetrator on the top and was not capable of breaking thru the canopy without it (at that time). Sad.

That incident, and one other incident, made me appreciate how complex modern ejection systems really are.