Video: Russian company design 'one of a kind' ejector seat set to revolutionise air travel

NPP Zvezda ARE best known for manufacturing spacesuits for Russian cosmonaut’s

The new seat has already been patented in Russia (RT)

As if like something out of James Bond, a Russian aerospace equipment company has invented an innovative light aircraft ejector seat that it hopes will save the lives of hundreds of pilots in the future.

NPP Zvezda, best known for manufacturing spacesuits for Russian cosmonaut’s, is the company that has come up with the design for the lighter ejector seat that they see as key to making light aircraft travel a lot safer for people.

The idea for the new ejector seat was first announced in 2013, at a light aviation expo in Germany, and it has gone through nearly two years of rigorous tests before being released onto the market.

Without ejector seats, if a plane gets into trouble, pilots have to go through the long process of undoing their seat belts, breaking out of the cabin and then using their parachute to get to the ground safely.

NPP Zvezda’s new design however, aims to combat that by creating an ejector system that weighs only 16kg and can do all of these processes in just a split second.

As seen in test videos released by NPP Zvezda, the system uses a pneumatic cylinder mounted on a telescopic metal pole to propel pilots high into the air to avoid colliding with the plane’s tail.

A spokesperson for Zvezda told RT: “A pilot may find it hard to leave the cabin of a stalling plane because he would have to first unbuckle the harness, remove the canopy, get out and push himself away from the hull. It all takes time.

“Our system does it all in less than a second.”

The design has recently been patented in Russia but NPP Zvezda has announced that they are keen to introduce the seat to other international markets.