Can you eject from an apache

Pilots experience a technical malfunction with their aircraft and are forced to eject seconds before the fighter hits the ground. A Cougar helicopter trying to rescue the pilots also crashed shortly after. Skip to the mark to get to the action. The two pilots in the K-8 aircraft successfully ejected before the crash and none of the crew of the Cougar helicopter were injured, authorities said. Venezuela's information minister, Ernesto Villegas, said the Chinese-made plane plummeted to the ground near a military parade at Libertador Air Base in the central state of Aragua.

He said in a message posted on his Twitter account that the cause of the crash was mechanical failure and it occurred as pilots participated in an exhibition to celebrate the anniversary of Venezuela's air force. Venezuela's Air Search and Rescue Service announced that a Cougar helicopter also crashed during an operation to rescue the pilots. Imagery includes photos taken from the invasion As for helos with the ejection seats, AFAIK most designs use seperation charges in the rotor head to seperate the blades prior to the seats leaving.

So they don't actually hit the blades on the way out hopefully. Can't think of any American design that used this feature tho. Ka Black-Shark? Didnt like it so they scrapped the idea. Pilots survive better if they stay with the aircraft. Ejecting at low altitudes supposedly isnt fun at all. But: 1 - At low altitude you would still need time to drop the blades and eject. Most helos operate at 'low' altitude, at the very highest.

Many, if not must helos are pretty 'lightweight' structurally strong, but lightweight especially when compared to normal aircraft - they have to be, to lift off vertically with their loads. Adding the weight of a couple of bang seats to the nose would required balanced weight to be added to the rear, and probably even more so than with conventional aircraft, every pound counts, if you add something, you're replacing either fuel, weapons, or payload.

The Ka will likely never be built in anything resembling operational numbers, and if it is, it's still to be seen whether the ejections seats would be incorporated. Are there any helicopters with ejection seats? If so, how is the clearance problem with the rotating blades solved?

As others above have stated, the Kamov KA family is fitted with an ejection seat. First the blades are separated from the blade sleeves, which remain attached to the mast rotor hub.

This cutaway image shows it to reasonable effect. The little sketch of the smoke on the lower right blade shows the separation, and the '18' and '19' show the extraction rocket. KA Cutaway image. Digital Combat Simulations's DCS line of computer simulations models the ka, including the ejection seat. I'm sure there's video from the game online somewhere. And Wikipedia verifies my memory:. It is the world's first operational helicopter with a rescue ejection system, which allows the pilot to escape at all altitudes and speeds.

Before the rocket in the ejection seat deploys, the rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is jettisoned. Here is an interesting video , demonstrating the blades being blown away, and ejection of the pilots.

As a side note, in the article I read in an aviation magazine many years ago, it mentioned a synchronization of the seat with the blade rotation so that the seat passes between the blades. It was based on a working principle similar to the middle machine gun that some WW2 German airplanes were equipped with that fired the projectiles between the propeller blades.

Judging from the fact that I read it somewhere in the late 90s where the project was still new and developing, as PlasmaHH pointed out, that was probably more a thought rather than a fact. Image source. Like the Ka, it blew the rotor blades off first before ejecting. This article mentions a crash of a Mi in which one pilot died:. The Mi was supposedly designed with an ejection seat system that fires its crew out the side and downward. The Mi doesn't actually have the ejection seats, the Mikoyan constructor bureau follows a different approach: they've created energy absorbing seats and landing gear to protect the pilot in a crash.

Kamov does install ejection seats in their helicopters, a. It blows off the rotor blades and shatters the upper glass windows to make the way clear for pilot ejection. One can see the white cord with explosive on the upper window of Ka on the pictures there is a white zigzag-like cord on the bottom of the pilot window :. Sign up to join this community.