Originally Posted by
A Squared
Using the time in the control bar of the video in the above linked article it looks like about 10-11 seconds from tail separation to impact. Not sure where the 24 seconds comes from.
I get 12 seconds from losing the first piece to impact. And it may have taken a few seconds to realize that the aircraft is damaged beyond hope (the pilot can't even see that the tail is gone).
Even if he realized that he had a problem, actually getting out of the aircraft may have been a challenge. He needed to unbuckle, lose the canopy, climb out, all in the matter of 10 seconds or less.
On top of that, G202's canopy is plagued by failure problems, and this very guy had an incident just last year when his canopy separated in flight because of the lever failure. He was a big fan of wire-rim aviator sunglasses (he has them on in every single video on the web site), so he would have been rendered near-blind by wind buffeting without the canopy. That past experience was probably a strong deterrent from any attempt to bail out. I wonder if he even got the canopy open. There's no sign of it being ejected in the video (though it's mostly transparent and could be easily missed.)
These aircraft should really be equipped with ejection seats. Yes, they are expensive and a hassle to maintain, but they greatly improve pilot's odds of survival in the event of a major low-altitude malfunction.