Quote:
Originally Posted by bongodriver
It would seem that it was an 'inadvertent' ejection... i.e. the pilot did not initiate the sequence himself, it seems there was no emergency situation to warrant doing so, even in the event of a fire it is not recomended to eject on the ground, if it was inadvertent then it was likely a malfunction and that could mean the seat fired through the canopy because the fault may have been just in the seat rockets, that would explain things like parachutes not deploying too.
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AFAIK on the Hawk you're shot through the canopy anyway, the explosive charges that run on the canopy are meant to destroy it before the ejection sequence starts.
It would be interesting to know whether the plane was parked, just returned from a flight or was about to go for one, since one of the first thing the ground crews normally do is disarming the ejector seat by means of the safety pins (there should be 3 or 4 of them?).