Ejection Seat

"Eject! EJECT! I can't shake him!"

—Porkins, Star Wars

Q: Now this I'm particularly proud of. You see the gear-stick here? Now if you take the top off, you'll find a little red button. Whatever you do, don't touch it.
James Bond: And why not?
Q: Because if you do, you'll release this section of the roof, and engage and fire the passenger ejector seat. Whoosh!
James Bond: Ejector seat? You're joking!
Q: I never joke about my work, 007.

—Goldfinger

Space Fighters, normal fighters, giant mecha, submarines, time travel cars, secret agent super cars, helicopters, piano recital vans... just about everything has an ejection seat installed. Expect its success rate to be determined by the plot.

It should be pointed out that shooting an airman after he or she's ejected is a war crime, though this is a relatively recent idea and wasn't in force until 1977.[1]

Smaller cousin of the Escape Pod.

Distinct from just Abandon Ship; rather than just getting the heck out of (the) Dodge, a machine's helping you out (the door).

Examples of Ejection Seat include:

Anime & Manga

  • Code Geass has ejector seats as a major feature of the Knightmare Frames. In fact, according to the backstory, this trope is the very reason Knightmares exist to begin with.[2] The fact that the Lancelot doesn't have one is made out to be a big deal.
    • Failsafe Failure is mostly averted, but there are a couple of moments. In one episode, we see a character (Kewell) die when the Guren Mk-II's radiant wave fries his machine's internal computers. In another, Lelouch is badly injured because the seat activates when he doesn't have a clear vector of escape, making it bounce off the ground and nearby objects like a rubber ball; it's frankly quite amazing that he didn't get whiplash.
  • In Evangelion, the "entry plugs" that the EVA pilots rode in could be ejected in case of emergency. They didn't always work.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam had the Core Fighter, a small aerospace fighter that makes up the cockpit of the Federation's Super Prototypes. The concept returns in a few series, but in some cases (particularly the Victory Gundam and Impulse Gundam) it seems to have been implemented mainly to allow for transformation and replacement of damaged parts rather than as an escape vehicle. Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team depicts a more traditional ejection seat.
    • The original Gundam's Core Fighter somewhat subverts this, since its main purpose is to preserve the Gundam's learning computer and its compiled combat data moreso than it is to protect the pilot.
  • While most Variable Fighters in the Macross universe have standard ejection seats, the VF-25 Messiah from Macross Frontier is unique in that it doesn't have a seat, per se, but the pilots wear exoskeletons/mini-mecha (called EX-Gear) that dock with the cockpit. The pilot can then eject and fly away, even in outer space, using their own self-propelled EX-Gear, which has its own wings, thrusters, and limbs.
    • Actually, the VF-0 and the VF-1 are the only UN Spacey Variable Fighters with a traditional ejector seat, everything from the VF-4A and up to the VF-22 series has the ejection system encompassing the entire cockpit area, creating an Escape Pod that the pilot can remain in until rescue.
  • Shin is forced to eject at least once in Area 88. One OVA character takes a sadistic glee in shooting down other pilots after they eject.
  • Italy and Poland both of them used it in different moments. Sadly, they got stuck in a tree immediately after.


Comics

  • Given its appearance in no fewer than two other media, it is a pretty safe assumption that every iteration of the Batmobile has an ejector seat.
    • The same goes for the Batplane/Batwing.
    • One of the Batman vs Predator titles features a borrowed single-pilot police attack helicopter with an ejection seat, which is odd, because there are very few helicopters with ejection seats. There was only one single-pilot attack helicopter produced ever.
  • In Green Lantern, an airplane went down and Hal Jordan thought that maybe the pilot had forgotten where the lever was. He himself had managed to persuade Kyle Rayner to take a flight—without his ring—and after Kyle had double-checked everything, he had asked how to trigger the ejection seat, and Hal hadn't remembered.
  • In one Archie comic book, Jughead as Captain Hero faces a courteous villain who left his own car via ejection seat, while the car is in motion.
  • Dilbert had some fired employee leave a meeting.

Films -- Animation

  • At the beginning of The Incredibles, Mr Incredible uses the ejector seat to get Buddy out of his car.
  • Yellow Submarine. Ringo is steering the sub as they pass through the Sea of Monsters. Old Ferd tells him "Whatever you do, don't touch that button." Of course Ringo does so, and is ejected out of the submarine.


Films -- Live-Action

  • During the test of the Jet Car, Buckaroo Banzai gets someone Locked Out of the Loop over his radio going "Eject, Buckaroo! Eject!" but Buckaroo refuses and goes on to go through the mountain and into the Eighth Dimension.
  • Iron Man saves a pilot who was pursuing him after the pilot is forced to eject. After damage to the fighter jet, the ejection seat is damaged, and the chute won't deploy. Tony uses the armor's strength to pull the lever hard enough to unjam it.
  • In Stealth, the Love Interest pilot is forced to eject in enemy territory. There's a long scene where she can't get her chute to deploy. She finally does, but she ends up injured because she was at a lower altitude than optimum for the chute.
  • James Bond's cars have had ejector seats in Goldfinger and Die Another Day.
    • In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond uses an ejector to eject an unwanted co-pilot from his stolen fighter jet, downing another plane in the process.
    • During one scene in GoldenEye, James Bond ejects himself and Natalya from a stolen prototype combat helicopter that was rigged to shoot itself with its own missiles. Of course, the ejection mechanism shot out the blades from the top rotor first, for fairly obvious reasons.
    • In Die Another Day, he uses it as a propellant to flip his Aston Martin back onto its wheels. Oh, and dodge a missile at high speed.
  • The quote at the top of this page comes from Star Wars during the assault on the Death Star (unfortunately for him, he gets blown up before he has time to eject). The starfighter is designed so that the cockpit and couch would separate from the fuselage and engines, thus leaving the pilot drifting in what was effectively a survival capsule. The suit is air tight and has a small force field that will keep you breathing for about three or four hours. Now being next to a giant moon-sized space station that explodes isn't exactly survivable so it was still a waste of time.
  • Top Gun shows that ejecting doesn't always help, as Goose smacks into the canopy and breaks his neck. This was a real risk at one time; now the ejection seat in many fighters is designed with a mechanism to shatter the glass before the pilot could hit it in the case that the canopy is not out of the way already.
    • Additionally, the F-14's canopy had a tendency to get sucked into a low-pressure zone directly above the cockpit during ejection.
  • The Cannonball Run features the Aston Martin DB V from Goldfinger, complete with ejector seat, driven by Roger Moore playing a man who thinks that he is Roger Moore.
  • Space Mutiny. "I LOST POWER!"
  • In contrast, the ejector seat on Pee Wee Herman's bike delivers nothing but poetic justice.
  • The Batmobile in The Dark Knight has an unconventional ejector seat which converts into a kickass Bike from hell.
  • Used in the Show Within a Show Austinpussy in Goldmember.
  • Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow (2004). Action Girl and Ace Pilot "Franky" Cook ejects from her submersible airplane just in time to avoid a Macross Missile Massacre. After breaking the surface of the water, a Jet Pack boosts her the rest of the way up to her Airborne Aircraft Carrier. Even the rival for the hero's affections is impressed.
  • Death Race has an ejector seat in the hero's car. The eject was never for the Hero, just the navigator. Assuming it's the same for all the vehicles, it makes sense seeing as how viewers would like to think the ladies don't die.
  • The Speed Racer movie has an ejection mechanism that fills the cockpit with foam and then ejects the foam ball with the pilot inside. This allows them to survive such events as crashing into pillars at 300 kph or falling off a track at skyscraper height. They did this to justify the heroes sideswiping cars off cliffs in a kid-friendly movie.
  • 2Fast2Furious features a pair of improvised ejection seats in two cars powered by partially spent N2O cylinders usually used for Nitro Boost. Played with when Brian delays hitting the button because he needs the mook in the seat for a little longer, and again when he presses the button and it doesn't work, opening the way for Roman's Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • Parodied in Hot Shots, where a character successfully ejects... right into another plane. His head is stuck in another pilot's cockpit for a good long while, his arms and legs flailing around uselessly as he begs said pilot "Don't land!"
  • In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, when Baron Bomburst commands Grandpa to make the eponymous car fly, Grandpa presses a button at random that sends the Baroness shooting skyward out of her seat (she is saved by her Parachute Petticoat).
  • Flight of the Intruder has several. They also work in an opportunity for Exact Words.

"This is the end of Devil 505, say goodbye asshole! Eject eject eject!"
"Goodbye asshole!" *ejection seats fire*


Literature

  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe uses this a lot more than the films, so that people can and do survive that way. Sometimes, however, the ejector seat malfunctions, sometimes the canopy doesn't open. Both the successful and the tragic versions happen in the X Wing Series, both books and comics. With the mag-con field active over their flight suits, pilots can survive for something like ten minutes before freezing, since Space Is Cold. There was actually a plot the Darklighter comic which hinged on ejecting in better suits while their modified TIEs got shot down.
  • Averted in The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, which goes into some detail as to why an ejection seat in a car is an insanely bad idea; when Bob Howard presses the eject button on his Cool Car, the entire car ejects, which is only slightly less so. It's made clear that only time you should press the button is if not pressing it is definitely going to kill you. The explanation also deflates the idea of the "easy eject"; Bob describes how, due to the G-forces involved, the pilot is likely looking at weeks in traction at best.
  • As in the games on which they're based, the Wing Commander novels occasionally feature ejection seats. In End Run, it's noted that there's a mechanism that's supposed to prevent an ejection while on the carrier, but that has a reputation for not always functioning. Later in the novel it fails for one pilot, smashing him against the landing bay overhead.[3]


Live-Action TV

  • The Vipers in Battlestar Galactica have ejector seats, although ejecting usually means that you'll either be in a flashback episode, or have a long, ruminating episode full of wangst while you contemplate your slow demise.
  • When Wendy Watson flies to rescue The Middleman, IDA triggers the Middlejet's Ejection Seat remotely, much to Wendy's horror.
  • Fighters in Babylon 5 are often equipped with ejector seats, though rescue is a bit of a crapshoot in space.
  • Knight Rider: KITT's ejection seats never left the car, they simply catapulted the occupant a couple stories in the air. Which makes less sense.
  • Get Smart: Maxwell Smart's car occasionally features an ejector seat. You can imagine how well that works.
  • The MythBusters proved you could, with some difficulty, put a crude ejector seat in a car and trick somebody into sitting on it.
  • In the Stargate Verse, the F-302, being space-worthy fighters, can eject the whole two-place cockpit, as to make sure the pilots can survive in space. Most of other races' mook mobiles, like the Goa'uld's Death Gliders or the Wraith Darts, have no such equipment.
  • In Farscape, Aeryn is ejected in one of these, with disastrously heart-breaking but, of course, non-permanent results.
  • An episode of Good Eats had Alton ejecting "James Bond" from his bar with an ejection stool, complete with a Shout-Out to the dialog at the top of the page.
  • Documentary series Pawn Stars had someone try to sell this to the pawn shop. It was appraised as genuine.
    • And they learned it was still functioning and in all the years it had been owned and used as a chair in someone's living room, no one decided to randomly try the eject button.
  • Played straight, averted, and subverted in several episodes of JAG. Appropriate, as several of the characters on the show are fighter pilots. Even part of the story behind Harm's Disappeared Dad.

Harm: "Punching out is the last thing a pilot ever wants to do. People think you get in trouble, pull the magic handle, and float safely to the ground? Every time you punch out you end up an inch shorter."


Tabletop Games

  • Some tau Battlesuits in Warhammer 40k has an option for this.
  • In Paranoia it's a common feature in R&D vehicles. Some of the many ways this can go horribly wrong:
    • The eject button is marked as "Bouncy Bubble Beverage Dispenser" or something along those lines.
    • The presence of an ejector seat was not considered when armour plating was added. (See also, head trauma.)
    • The seatbelt, if you used it at all, was poorly designed and disconnects as soon as the seat ejects.
    • And many, many more.
  • BattleTech has these for its Humongous Mecha, usually with an automatic trigger in case of an ammo explosion that would otherwise destroy the 'Mech and the pilot with it. In some advanced designs, the entire head assembly comes free, but a plain old ejection after popping the canopy is still the default. It may be worth noting that the setting does canonically feature enemies ruthless enough to specifically gun for MechWarriors forced to do this.
  • An option for a Car Wars vehicle, too. It boasted three accessory packages: a hang glider to fly away, a parachute to waft down, or (the 'Mother-in-law special') absolutely nothing, for the Wile E Coyote impersonation scene. No restrictions on vehicle (although helicopters did lose their rotors after ignition request). Fellow Steve Jackson Games product GURPS Vehicles also, naturally, had these.

Video Games

  • In Critical Mass, if you don't eject before your ship is destroyed, you have Final Death. This is true of most flight-simulation games, unless there is no ejection option.
  • In Escape Velocity, playing on "Strict Play" mode makes buying an escape pod a wise move. There's an auto-eject option which automatically launches it if your ship is breaking up.
  • Featured prominently in the Wing Commander series. Ejecting means that you just failed every remaining objective (because your wingman Can't Go On Without You), but it can occasionally be a wise move, especially if you don't like Save Scumming. Ejection in many missions, however, was still a loss. And one Kilrathi ace in particular was known for shooting up ejected pilots. In the cartoon Wing Commander Academy, the ejection was via an enclosed pod, not just one's seat.
  • Steel Battalion would delete your save if you didn't use the molly-guarded Big Red Button on the insanely expensive custom controller to bail out of your Humongous Mecha.
  • The Mech Commander series had ejection as part of the gameplay. Your Mechwarriors would typically successfully eject (with some injury, which was another gameplay mechanic) should their 'Mechs be disabled by anything but destruction of the head. Understandably (as the head contains the cockpit), destruction of the cockpit results in the death of the Mechwarrior. In either case, death of your Mechwarrior would result in him being removed from your roster permanently; a fairly big issue, as Mechwarriors get better with experience and recruited Mechwarriors cost credits and are typically worse than the ones you currently have.
  • Mechwarrior had escape pods built into the cockpits that gave pilots a chance to survive losing their BattleMechs. They were seemingly powerful enough to get back to orbit under their own power, which is a good bit beyond the normal capabilities of ejection seats in the board game.
  • In Operation Flashpoint pilots routinely bail out from their badly damaged helicopters. (It's not ejection in the usual sense of the word, they simply jump out and pull their chutes, but it's still absurd, since they usually go through the still-turning rotors and yet remain unharmed.
  • One of the devices you can equip on your vehicle in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
  • Ejection seats play a major role in Faking the Dead at one point in Ace Combat 5. A jammed ejection seat kills Chopper earlier.
    • Enemy aces in Ace Combat Zero sometimes manage to eject and survive the battle, according to the Assault Records.
  • Ejection seats play a role in Super Robot Wars games from time to time, usually to explain how someone survived getting a mech shot down.


Web Comics

  • Liquid Snake wound up in Alaska after accidentally ejecting himself from a helicopter in The Last Days of Foxhound. He then guesses that he must be in the North Pole, and wonders where the penguins are.
  • Freefall has it in cockpit of the "Savage Chicken" as Helix found. And later pointed for Sam as the way to "get into the air as soon as possible". Of course, this involved blowing up a chunk of the "roof" and checks it's actually done ("Two words. Roof pizza"). Which needed replacement, especially explosive bolts that do this. Also, the crew doesn't wear helmets in cockpit anyway (except Sam, but how well his suit is sealed is another question).

Western Animation

  • During the 1980s, the Moral Guardians were all concerned about damaging fragile child minds, so Never Say "Die" was in full effect. This was particularly noticeable on G.I. Joe. Any aerial dogfight between the Joes and Cobra ended up with the loser ejecting and parachuting to safety before their plane was destroyed. Peril sensitive ejector seats FTW!
  • Batman: The Animated Series examples:
  • Batman in Batman the Brave And The Bold has an ejector seat in the Batplane. He hovered a finger over the button because Plastic Man was getting on his nerves.
  • The first season finale of Megas XLR features one of these, with the button "Bet You Can't Guess What This Button Does". Next season, there was an "Eject Skippy" button, conveniently anticipating where the annoying kid would be sitting.
  • An episode of The Smokey Bear Show had one character installing an ejector seat in another character's newly acquired sports car.
  • In the "Rhode Island Road Race" episode of Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop uses her ejector seat to expel Dick Dastardly.
  • Freddy installs an ejection seat in the desert racing episode of What's New, Scooby Doo?.
  • The Swat Kats Turbo Kat plane has ejector seats for both T-Bone and Razor. The seats could fly independently for some time, and were shown re-docking with the plane in a few cases.
  • Space Ghost: Jan and Jayce's little space coupe has ejector seats.
  • The Javelins used by Justice League Unlimited have ejector pods.
  • Brock Sampson of Venture Brothers owns a '69 Charger with an ejection seat.
  • In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Elementary, My Dear Stacey", Agent "Double 0" 0's car has an ejector seat. Agent P triggers it.
  • Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: One of the most famous upgrades Gadget added to her father's plane, as Monty accidentally finds out.
  • In Storm Hawks, Properly Paranoid Crazy Prepared Stork builds the Storkmobile. Among other safety features is an ejector seat. Because, as Stork says, "You always need an ejector seat."


Real Life

  • In real life, 20% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot sustaining career-ending injuries, such as death. Also, 100% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot losing several inches of height, due to the sudden compression of being flung out of your plane at anywhere from 12 to 22 Gs (depending on what ejection seat your plane was equipped with). Most air forces impose a career limit on the number of ejections permissible before it's desk job city for you.
    • Indeed pilots don't eject at the first hint of trouble, either. Considerable effort if first put into slowing the aircraft because at supersonic or just plain fast speeds the wind the pilot is slamming into could possibly rip the mask off of a pilot's face and ram the air down his esophagus, inflating his stomach like a balloon, which makes simply impacting the ground sans parachute sound like a better option. Slowing down to a more reasonable speed to eject into is a good idea, if you can do it. A 200 mph wind is about the fastest nature throws at us. 600 mph is unnatural. The conventional wisdom among pilots is to eject only if not ejecting will kill you.
    • Note that in one extraordinary case, not only the pilot survived the ejection, but so did the aircraft, as it managed to land sans pilot, and sustained so little damage that it was returned to service. (See here for more details). Even more here Definitely a "Truth is stranger than fiction" moment.
    • Before ejection seats were invented, escaping an aircraft by "bailing out" was even more dangerous. If you were lucky, there was a control that would blast off the canopy with explosive charges. If not, you had to open the canopy yourself, either climb out or roll the aircraft over and fall out, and essentially perform an impromptu skydive. Unlike a normal skydive however, the aircraft is likely to be violently spinning and rapidly losing altitude due to loss of engines, control surfaces, entire wings, or all of the above. If the plane was flying low enough or couldn't be controlled at all, many pilots chose to stay in their planes and die instantly in the crash instead of risk bailing out and dying a slower, more horrible death. At least 50% died on the way out (not counting the ones who didn't make it out at all), and only around a quarter made it back home safely, the rest of the survivors either being taken prisoner or horribly wounded. Early-model Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Bell P-39 Airacobras were notoriously difficult to bail out of because the wind would literally hold the side-folding canopy shut, making it almost impossible to escape the plane.
      • Production Airacobras didn't have sliding canopies, they had doors, but that didn't make them easier to bail out, for a different reason. The relative positions of the cockpit door and the stabilizer effectively made sure that if any pilot taller than a midget would forget to take a fetal position after bailing out, his legs will be broken by a stabilizer, this usually being a career ending injury even if the pilot managed to land on his own territory and was saved by the groung troops. More than a few pilots suffered such a misfortune, the most famous of them being a Soviet ace Boris Glinka (29 victories).
      • The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, likewise, had a nasty habit of killing or permanently injuring anybody attempting to bail out of it. The plane basically had 2 fuselages, with a boomlike horizontal stabilizer stretching the entire width between them. Bailing out of the cockpit (located in the middle between the 2 fuselages) would likely slam you into the boom, whether you curled into a fetal position or not. Rumor has it that it was this plane that inspired the invention of the ejection seat in the first place.
    • There's a close up photo of F-16 ejection at Mountain Home airshow in 2003. — note the pyrotechnics. At which point the photographer finally realized that there's an aircraft (now certainly uncontrolled) apparently flying straight at him and it's evacuation time. The pilot (Captain Chris Stricklin) managed to steer away from the crowd, but not pull up, and ejected 0.8 second before crash (didn't even ram the observation tower in which the photo was taken, and walked away with minor injuries, so the only loss was the plane itself). He had to leave the stunt squadron after this, but in 2009 got an award for good work on safety programmes.
  • Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, describes a harrowing account Chuck Yeager had with an experimental rocket-powered aircraft, which malfunctioned at a very, very high altitude - he ejected when there was no hope of regaining control, and while airborne was hit by the seat and severely burned on the face and hand by its propellant. He makes it down alive and mobile, but horrifies the young motorist who finds him with his injuries.
  • Ejection system are attached to manned space launchers to blast the manned bit clear if the launcher is danger of exploding on the launchpad. This has only ever been used once for real, when the two-man crew of Soyuz T-10-1, waiting for a trip to Salyut 7 in 1983, were ejected clear of their launcher just before a fire destroyed it.
  • In 1975, another Soyuz mission had its capsule ejected while heading for orbit as the third stage was deviating too much.
  • In a case of ejection by design, Yuri Gagarin, on the world's first manned space flight, actually ejected from his Vostok capsule and landed separately by parachute. This was covered up for many years, as the FAI rules of the time required a pilot to land with his capsule for the flight to count. Gagarin, dressed in a bright orange spacesuit, landed next to a man and his daughter, having to explain he wasn't an alien, he was a fellow Soviet and needed to find a telephone.
  1. ↑ Yes, it doesn't make much sense when you think about it. Can you imagine anyone letting a crewman jump out of his tank, wrap a bit of silk around himself and walk away from the battle? Perhaps the most bizarre example of this is that if you shoot down a plane carrying paratroops (who are not granted the same protection), you can shoot at the parachuting soldiers, but shooting at the plane's actual aircrew is a war crime. Erm... The technical answer is that an airman without a plane is no longer unable to discharge his or her functions and is therefore Hors de combat, whereas paratroops are still able to do some damage. (Tank crews, though...)
  2. ↑ Britannia looked into putting Ejector Seats in traditional war machines like tanks, but then they added legs so they could escape the battlefield and it kind of snowballed from there
  3. ↑ for those not familiar with naval terminology, the ceiling
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