The Ejection Site

These photos of a SAAB 37 Viggen seat come from Mark Verbeek. He took them in a museum.

The Raketstol fpl 37 is the last SAAB designed seat in service. A derivitive of the SAAB-105 trainer seat, which in turn was developed from the J-35 Draaken seat, this seat has many advanced features. The seat is equipped with the KFF-53 parachute system, arm nets, leg restraints and stabilizer chute. This seat appears to be a Generation Two or Three version, which indicates it was produced after 1983.

The handle next to the headrest is the seat safing handle. Fired by either of the arm rest handles, the seat deploys nets from behind the seat backrest via lanyards to the front edge of the seat sides (at the silver colored tabs). Leg restraints hold the lower limbs in place. This seat was tested at the USAF sled test facility at Holloman AFB to 700KEAS which is one of the highest ratings of any service seats.

Due to the low level flying for which the Swedish Air Force is known, the seat is optimized for low altitude, high speed ejections. Low speed capability is limited to 75 KM/h on the runway.

There is additional information on SAAB ejection seats on this page.