A passenger enjoying a civilian joyride accidentally cut the trip short when he ejected himself from the plane after grabbing the eject lever while trying to brace himself.
Steve can relate to this as well, being a graduate of USAFA, (U.S. Air Force Academy). I transferred out the middle of my sophomore year; but I was able to partake in some of the motivational flights in the T-37 trainer, (shown below) which is a subsonic side-by-side seater.
Prior to going up, they would put us in a model of the cockpit and go over all the procedures, especially on how to eject properly. They made no bones about the fact that if an emergency did occur, and the officer told us to eject, we were to do it--no questions asked. They also stressed that if something did happen to the pilot, such as his becoming incapacitated, we were to eject immediately and not play hero. The visual aid they used was a scar on the mountainside next to the academy where a cadet met his end by not ejecting when the pilot lost consciousness.
With that being said, the guy in this story must have been a total nimrod for doing something that stupid in a jet.
Getting my daily guffaws in a coffee shop!!!!!
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