Originally Posted by
Coachcpt
And clearly a fine demonstration as to why having a back seater on display is a bad, bad idea.
Out of interest in normal trainer ops who would of been sat on the back seat? The instructor or the instructee?
With a compromised canopy like was would the ability to eject should a secondary event occur while returning be scuppered also? - should
even the canopy of blown through like it did? I expect the pop your safety hat on before you get on the job are going to be all over this event….
Clearly a well handled recovery, one photo I have seen shows broken bits of canopy near the engine intake which can go onto the engine which can lead to even bigger issues.
Yes, having an extra occupant can expose them to unnecessary risk, although there is a pretty thick blast screen between the cockpits so birds strikes like this rarely go through to the rear cockpit - although as can be seen in the picture above, there can be quite a lot of bird remains covering the screen and obscuring the back seater’s view forward.
In normal (pilot) training ops the instructor would sit in the back. The broken canopy would have damaged a lot of the miniature detonating cord in the front canopy - what was left ‘might’ detonate or not depending on where the breaks occur but the seat will push through any remaining bits of perspex if necessary - it shouldn’t affect an ejection by the back seater.