Ejection Seat of Fighter Jet Accidentally Triggered at Air Zoo
Did an employee accidentally set off an ejection seat during a tour this morning or is this an April Fool's prank?
At 8 AM this morning, the Air Zoo tweeted a photo of giant hole in their ceiling with the following message,
One of our Docents (to remain unnamed), accidentally discharged the ejection seat while giving a tour of our F/A-18 Hornet. Luckily everyone is okay!
I asked the Kalamazoo Air Zoo if they could share photos of the seat and fighter jet involved. Apparently, they cannot provide a photo of the seat because they cannot find it according to their response,
We're still looking for the seat, we've sent the guilty docent out to find it. The docent was giving an early tour, today, April 1, and accidentally hit an emergency panel on the outside of the aircraft that sent the thing shooting out the ceiling.
Maybe I'm being paranoid because of April Fool's Day. However, there are a couple red flags for me here.
#1 Not being able to locate the seat seems outrageous. Truth be told, I don't know how far ejection seats can travel, but that does seem unrealistic, right?
#2 The Air Zoo went out of their way to point out that today is April 1st in their message to me.
#3 They went on to say that the person that mistakenly triggered the ejection seat felt like a real fool.
#4 The tweet was sent via Tweet Deck at exactly 8am. That indicates to me that it was possibly scheduled the night before.
OK, those are pretty big red flags. What do you think? Did an employee of the Air Zoo accidently fire off an ejection seat during an early morning tour of a fighter jet. Or, am I the real fool here?