My question is assuming the pilot left autopilot turned on why did he eject or as others have pointed out was he ejected automatically without the pilot pulling the handle
All I know is it seems very odd a pilot would eject from a 100 million dollar plane and the plane kept flying and the military had no idea where the plane was for some amount of time
Wouldn’t even need the autopilot to be turned on...all modern fly-by-wire fighters automatically trim themselves to 1g (straight & level) in the absence of joystick/pilot input.
I agree. I have been looking and so far the only thing I found was a two day shutdown on flying and some mandatory safety training, plus the plane being left on auto pilot.
The F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter jet was “involved in a mishap,” military officials based in Charleston, South Carolina, said on Sunday. The pilot ejected and was taken to a nearby medical center “in a stable condition,” officials from Joint Base Charleston said.
The U.S. Air Force judges a “mishap” to cover a wide range of scenarios, or “any unintended occurrence in the Air or Space Force that results in death, injury, illness or property damage.”
The jet was part of a training squadron with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing
An F-35B crashed in South Carolina in 2018, after which the U.S. military temporarily grounded its fleet of the aircraft.
After ejecting, the pilot claimed to have lost the plane due to bad weather. He has since been discharged.
He is understood to have left the jet on autopilot when he ejected — sparking a desperate, embarrassing hunt that included the military appealing to locals to help find the aircraft