Martin Baker sued

[Soleair]

Ejector seat maker is to be prosecuted over death of Red Arrows pilot

[Nico13]

I remember when this happened and wondering what went wrong.

 

You see as an interested by stander part of my job many many years back was to install Martin Baker seats into the Mirage III for the RAAF after we had finished a major service on the aircraft at Avalon.

 

The other interesting thing that came to mind was back then, about thirty and some years back we installed a modification to the seats to convert them from a "zero/ninety" seat to a "zero/zero seat". This modification was basically the installation of a rocket pack to the bottom of the seat allowing an ejection at standstill that would throw the seat high enough with the pilot firmly fastened in it to parachute height and then automatically falling away leaving the pilot with his main chute again automatically released.

 

Prior to this the aircraft had to be doing at least ninety knots fwd speed to allow the canopy jettison to work, with the rocket pack they just go right through the canopy with no problem, canopy breakers on the top of the seat would look after this.

 

Sad to see a life saving device fail and wind up taking a life.

 

 

[M61A1]

What is really sad is that lawyers are now involved....not much incentive at all to be producing anything useful, let alone a life saving device that can hurt someone if they misuse it.

 

a cut and past from another article..just mind blowing (the litigation mindset) It's much like sueing Holden because a mechanic made a mistake when servicing your car.

 

Two maintenance errors had gone unobserved by both engineers and pilots including Cunningham, says Central Lincolnshire coroner Stuart Fisher in his narrative conclusion to the inquest. The latter problem meant that the seat firing handle was slightly out of position, and when its safety pin was inserted to immobilise the handle, the pin did not engage with its housing, leaving the ejection system effectively live.

 

 

[planedriver]

Outside their factory Nth West of London they used to have a sign (and probably still do) stating how many lives had been saved worldwide. It's a mind-blowing number, probably up around the 10,000 mark by now, so it's sad to see litigation after such an inspiring run of successes.

 

 

[KRviator]

What is really sad is that lawyers are now involved....not much incentive at all to be producing anything useful, let alone a life saving device that can hurt someone if they misuse it.a cut and past from another article..just mind blowing (the litigation mindset) It's much like sueing Holden because a mechanic made a mistake when servicing your car.

Two maintenance errors had gone unobserved by both engineers and pilots including Cunningham, says Central Lincolnshire coroner Stuart Fisher in his narrative conclusion to the inquest. The latter problem meant that the seat firing handle was slightly out of position, and when its safety pin was inserted to immobilise the handle, the pin did not engage with its housing, leaving the ejection system effectively live.

To use your Holden analogy, I am not a mechanic. But if I buy a Commodore and it needs work, I then take it to a bloke who has been trained by Holden in their vehicles. IF he makes a mistake that disables the brakes under certain conditions and kills my missus & kids, why should he not be liable for it? IT isn't that old mate misused the seat, but even if he had to use it in anger, it would have been rendered useless, as shown in the following paragraph...MB knew there was a risk of the pilot's parachute failing to deploy if a particular nut & bolt combination were too tight, and they knew this 20 years ago, but apparently failed to warn the RAF, so not only did the seat malfunction (with the safety pin being described as "effectively useless" by the Coroner), but, having been inadvertently ejected, a survivable accident was rendered a fatal one by the failure of a piece of equipment that MB knew could be defective.

 

 

[M61A1]

To use your Holden analogy, I am not a mechanic. But if I buy a Commodore and it needs work, I then take it to a bloke who has been trained by Holden in their vehicles. IF he makes a mistake that disables the brakes under certain conditions and kills my missus & kids, why should he not be liable for it? IT isn't that old mate misused the seat, but even if he had to use it in anger, it would have been rendered useless, as shown in the following paragraph...MB knew there was a risk of the pilot's parachute failing to deploy if a particular nut & bolt combination were too tight, and they knew this 20 years ago, but apparently failed to warn the RAF, so not only did the seat malfunction (with the safety pin being described as "effectively useless" by the Coroner), but, having been inadvertently ejected, a survivable accident was rendered a fatal one by the failure of a piece of equipment that MB knew could be defective.

The point seems to have been missed, anyway, given that other forces around the world, using the same seat in the same aircraft, were aware of the issue, tells me that this probably wasn't a MB issue, but somewhere in the RAF.

.

 

 

[M61A1]

Outside their factory Nth West of London they used to have a sign (and probably still do) stating how many lives had been saved worldwide. It's a mind-blowing number, probably up around the 10,000 mark by now, so it's sad to see litigation after such an inspiring run of successes.

Home 7506 according to this.