It all makes sense, but it must have a chilling effect on any military aviator reading this who finds themselves in a position to consider doing the same.Z
Cirrus flight instruction uses the military statistic that historically military aviators have had a really strong negative bias to ejection during training compared to in combat. Part of the rationale was that of course ejecting during combat is easy to save face, whereas in training far more pilots would try to save a rapidly eroding flight. The lesson for Cirrus pilots was that CAPS is there to save your life, and this attitude of "but I can make it" really is just a strong predictor for killing yourself in an otherwise saveable situation.
Here, it is acknowledged he followed the procedures, but there's an implication that he could have reasoned his way into realizing it wasn't as serious as he thought. Well, to acknowledge he "did everything right," but it wasn't right enough, and therefore negatively impact his career, doesn't bode well for other pilots who'll find themselves in his situation. Of course the one asterisk is to all of this is if you fundamentally believe that at this particular job all this reasoning should inherently not apply.
Is this just the consequences of rapidly ballooning costs of modern fighter jets? At a tenth of a billion dollars each, there's not much room in the budget for what are even understandable aircraft losses. If I'm not mistaken nothing else is nearly as expensive except the B2. In some ways, losing one of these things is getting pretty close to losing a naval vessel.
Acknowledging this to be the case might help people to understand why they're demanding perfection even if it's risky for the pilots.
I'm already surprised that they are not looking at the number, realizing that pilots cost much less to train than planes to build, and draw conclusions from there. The army has been more cynical in the past.
It's not that he could have reasoned his way to not ejecting, it's that the standby instruments were still functioning, and are there for just this moment. He could have continued without ejecting based on that alone.
Reading between the lines, he flinched, and while that was in line with the manual, the manual wasn't good enough, and as someone below said: the position from which he was dismissed was one where they evaluate, criticize and extend the manual. Ejecting too soon wasn't a failure of due diligence, but it disqualified him from a position where "in line with the manual" isn't good enough.
Cirrus flight instruction uses the military statistic that historically military aviators have had a really strong negative bias to ejection during training compared to in combat. Part of the rationale was that of course ejecting during combat is easy to save face, whereas in training far more pilots would try to save a rapidly eroding flight. The lesson for Cirrus pilots was that CAPS is there to save your life, and this attitude of "but I can make it" really is just a strong predictor for killing yourself in an otherwise saveable situation.
Here, it is acknowledged he followed the procedures, but there's an implication that he could have reasoned his way into realizing it wasn't as serious as he thought. Well, to acknowledge he "did everything right," but it wasn't right enough, and therefore negatively impact his career, doesn't bode well for other pilots who'll find themselves in his situation. Of course the one asterisk is to all of this is if you fundamentally believe that at this particular job all this reasoning should inherently not apply.