Safety A Big Concern In Maintaining Ejection Seats

By ANN Special Contributor Mike Barton

It takes less than a second.

In that time, quicker than a heartbeat, the rocket-powered seat in a military jet can exit at a speed from zero to 160 mph. Think of it as something akin to being kicked in the rear by a speeding bullet train – like Superman speed. The force of this explosion is designed to carry a crewmember safely – a relative term here – but quickly out of the cockpit of a doomed aircraft. There’s really very little about an ejection that is safe, but it beats the daylights out of the alternative.

Now put that same ejection seat into an aircraft undergoing maintenance inside a depot hangar. Working near it, instead of a crewmember, you might have an electrician or a metal worker or an avionics tech or, in short, anyone who performs maintenance on aircraft here. In fact, this person could be you. You would not be tightly strapped into the seat like a pilot would be. You probably wouldn’t be wearing a helmet. You certainly wouldn’t be expecting a sudden and short ride. And, of course, there would be the hangar ceiling to think about.

To the untrained eye, most military aircraft look pretty tame when they’re crouching quietly on the deck. But when Paige Ackiss and Rick Haskett look at one of these aircraft, they see a sleeping tiger. Ackiss and Haskett are members of the Ordnance and Survival Equipment Shop here, an 11-member team of ordnance professionals led by Supervisor Phil Day. Their mission, in simple terms, is to prevent you from blowing up yourself, or someone else, when you work on or around these aircraft.

Ackiss and Haskett perform that mission as the depot’s Egress/Explosive Safety training leaders. It is their job to train personnel here to recognize the tiger too. They do this through the Egress/Explosive System Checkout Program, designed to teach recognition of the many and various explosive devices and systems on all military aircraft worked on here. The training is divided into two courses – a two-hour initial training class for first-timers, and a shorter refresher course. The refresher is required every six months, and for those personnel who have been out of the maintenance cycle for 90 or more days. Instruction begins in the classroom with a lecture supported by graphic displays, equipment samples and a video that candidly demonstrates the results of explosives testing. Afterward, the class moves onto the flight line for a look at real explosive systems on the beasts themselves.

Last year, Ackiss and Haskett provided awareness training to approximately 800 personnel, some more than once for a total of more than 1,500 students. The training, designed to cover every type of aircraft worked on here, helped personnel to perform over 2,600 accident-free ordnance evolutions. The classes are scheduled several times a month, often enough to cover every person who goes anywhere near these hazards, whether it is fixed or rotary winged aircraft.

There are many good reasons for going through this training. Aside from the fact that NAVAIR regulations require it and a depot instruction reinforces it, Ackiss and Haskett know that you have to use the “loaded gun theory” when you work around these potentially dangerous systems. You must treat them as if they are armed until you see proof that they are safe.

The two training leaders also know that time is a factor. Few people really want to spend the hour or two it takes to go through the classes. But compare that to the possible results of not doing it. Compare that to the second or two it takes to injure or kill yourself or a fellow coworker because of one simple mistake.

They want to arm you against that mistake. It doesn’t matter whether you work on jets,
propeller driven aircraft, or helicopters. They teach their students that in normal operation, any aircraft here can be loaded with various types of explosive charges in places that have nothing to do with dropping bombs or shooting down bad guys.

The most obvious, of course, is the ejection seat. Others, placed strategically around the aircraft include pylons rigged to eject bomb racks and storage tanks. There are canopies rigged so that the Plexiglas is destroyed or the entire canopy is ejected
completely off of the bird. There are explosive-armed anti-fire systems, pyrotechnic devices designed to cut through cables on cargo systems and winches, and a compressed nitrogen system designed to force the landing gear down in the event of in-flight hydraulic failure. Add to that devices that can be triggered by careless cellular telephone or communication radio use and you have a very dangerous combination.

It’s all there, just waiting for the careless or the unwary … and it doesn’t know the good guys from the bad. All it needs is a second of your time.

FMI: www.navy.mil