The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other)

Not quite GA, but this jet still belonged to Lockheed, not to the military when this little oops took place.

IMO it’s pretty clear what happened: the forward lift fan drive failed about the time he touched down a bit hard. So suddenly the aft exhaust was still lifting ~50% of the weight but the front was unsupported except for the landing gear. The engine accelerated as the drag of the lift fan came away and now we’re off to the races up on one wingtip as the nose gear fails in overload. A couple seconds later the pilot chops the throttle and as the engine spools down & the thrust decays it sits back down on the main gear. At which point he decides to get while the getting is still good.

It’s also interesting to see a true zero-zero ejection with the most modern ejection seat out there and how very, very close that was to the pilot not getting much of a chute before ground arrival. IOW zero-zero is very very close to not enough.

Per the various new stories available at this time, it’s unclear how injured or not the pilot is. Not dead, but after that it’s all a blur.