Luftwaffe Grounds Eurofighter

[aristocrat]

The German Air Force has grounded its entire fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon fighters following the detection of glitches in the ejection seat, which, it turns out, cannot guarantee safe operation under certain conditions. Flying operations were suspended on September 15. Among the grounded aircraft will be the ones I photographed conducting training flights (see above) at the Luftwaffe's 73 Fighter Wing at Rostock-Laage airfield near Germany's Baltic coast in February. The grounding is reportedly connected with the August crash in which a Saudi pilot was killed in Spain.

The grounding comes just hours before EADS, the company that owns a controlling stake in the Eurofighter consortium, rebranded its defence business (EADS Defence & Security) as CASSIDIAN.

Livefist - The Best of Indian Defence: Luftwaffe Grounds Eurofighter

 

[Luftwaffe]

What!! Germans have one of the most advanced MK-16A Martin Baker ejection seats.
http://typhoon.starstreak.net/Eurofighter/cockpit.html

 

[Capt.Popeye]

@Luftwaffe
Why on earth did you ground the Eurofighters? Just kiddin.
Thanks for posting the link- its informative. Even the best of equipment can throw up glitches. Probably we'll hear more about this later.

 

[Luftwaffe]

I felt like going for comfy seating F-35s

 

[SpArK]

Britain fixes Eurofighter ejector seats after Spain crash

Britain's Royal Air Force has modified the ejection seat harnesses on its Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft following a fatal accident in Spain, the Ministry of Defence said Monday.
The RAF grounded all Typhoons deployed outside operational theatres from Wednesday until Monday so that the problem with the seats could be fixed, a spokesman for the ministry said in a statement.
Jets forming part of the RAF's quick reaction force in Britain and in the disputed Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic had already been modified and flights involving them were not affected, he added.
"The safety of our personnel is paramount," the spokesman said. "Sufficient modifications have now been undertaken and non-operational Typhoon flights have resumed."
The Royal Air Force has a fleet of 54 Typhoons.
A Saudi air force pilot was killed during a training flight in August with a Spanish instructor when their Eurofighter Typhoon crashed for an unknown reason. The instructor managed to eject and was only slightly hurt.
Saudi Arabia has its pilots trained to fly the aircraft by the Spanish air force under a bilateral agreement with Madrid.
Germany grounded all 55 of its Eurofighters indefinitely from Wednesday last week because of the same ejector seat problem, saying that "in certain circumstances the ejector seat does not operate faultlessly."
The Typhoon, a multi-purpose twin-engine fighter jet introduced in 2003, is built by a consortium of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), Britain's BAE Systems and Alenia/Finmeccanica of Italy.
It also serves with the Italian air force.

Britain fixes Eurofighter ejector seats after Spain crash < Spanish news | Expatica Spain