Evidence given to the inquest that requires discussion
“In September 2003 I was an instructor at RAF Valley flying a Hawk. It was a night flight sortie. I was in the rear seat, the student was in the front,”
“I did the sortie, landed and taxied along. And I could not put the seat pin back in the hole. I expected it to go back into the hole in the housing and the seat pin* handle. [*pan]
“It would not go through. I could see that the handle was partly caught by a strap. The handle was not completely free from the strap that surrounded it.
“I believe pressure on the strap may have pulled the handle up. If the handle is not correctly sited, the pin will not go back into the hole.
“I was probably a millimetre away from movement that meant I would have ejected. And I was lucky to get away with that.”
An ejector seat has a locking pin, which is pulled before take-off in order for the seat to be made live in an emergency.
The operating handle can then be manually pulled from the safe position through to further settings to activate the seat.
“It is only position three that will set it off, I was at one-and-a-half.
“So the action I took was still the safe thing to do, in terms of pushing it down.”
Q1. Is the seat pan handle linkage levers or cables? (You can't push a simple cable)
Q2. Does pushing the handle back into the housing reset the mechanism
Q3. Did this individual report this incident