Problem with that would be that in real life the pilot is supposed to bring down the helicopter safely and that most helicopters do not have an ejection seat, however in the game it would imply that most lesser qualified pilots would just eject and let their passengers/crew die rather than saving everybody.

If a pilot leaves the control, he would likely die from hitting the rotors or other part of the aircraft.

Nope, mate. Although KA-50 has such function and agree with guys above.

You just get nice and comfy in that pilot's seat and practice flying :P

Kamov and Hokum however were built with this in mind and would lose all dangers of blades based on their tandem rotor function.

Adding explosives means that much more (CAREFUL) maintenance not to mention tandem setup would require a different layout which would run a possible chance of damaging the aircraft in ways not anticipated.

The Havoc for example does NOT have this feature, so if you are the pilot of a tandem seat helicopter then you have to attempt to land it through auto rotation if things become problematic (this is also the reason as to why they have very high rate shock absorbant seats with a very secure seat belt.

So if we were to combine reality here then all but the Kajiman would NOT have explosives..that said, I'm kind of against this idea for standard aircraft because less skilled pilots have a tendency to bail out on the slightest trouble as Akinari said.

i think at least you should be able to jump out, just like in ArmA 2 ACE, besides, passangers cant eject from some choppers

You can jump out, on the ground, where you aren't at risk of an oversized fan decapitating you. CH-49 might work considering the tail rotor is on one side and mostly out of the way.

I'd be all for people bailing out of helicopters with parachutes...if as a penalty, pending the helicopter movement path, your body or chute clips the rotor, you get pulled into it and killed.

nod, people jump DOWN, and the helicopter its not going at 400 km/h, there is no way the people that jump could hit the rotors

I forgot that airborne use the blackhawk and not just the chinook so I suppose transport heli's in general would be fine...for passengers since they could have parachutes on hand..pilots on the other hand have no room for them in that tight space between the seat and dash.

the WWII pilots did had some training to put them quickly in case something happened

WWII aircraft didn't have high stress shock absorbant landing gear or seats that slide down metal pipes against springs so that it receives the brunt of impact and not pilot though.

We're also comparing fixed wing to whirlybirds, wherein their props are in completely different places and operate a bit differently. Generally speaking if there is something is causing the helicopter to go down then the last thing you want to do is jump out of it because you're likely to go up by comparison.

If the idea was for pilots to simply bail out then auto rotation (turning off the engines, raising collective, sucking in the wind and following a glideslope.) wouldn't be a mandatory lesson.

Should you lose both of your engines then the helicopter is going to go down no matter what you do, at best you can auto rotate to glide down. If you put the helicopter in a relatively static hover position then it's going to drop like a rock because there is no force pushing the blades and providing lift.

I've also seen "pilots" abuse this feature in Arma 2 wherein they would bail out on loss of a tail rotor, rather than pitch the nose down to gain speed and overpower the torque and attempt to land the aircraft... Of course this would be so much easier if we could taxi the aircraft to safety but it's still possible.

Downvoted, helo pilots wouldn't bail from the helicopter, they would attempt a crash landing. Hell, even the passengers wouldn't attempt to bail out of a crashing helicopter, they'd be blended into blood smoothies when they hit the rotor. This "pilot bailing out" business has been a major issue for people in Battlefield, as getting a kill on a pilot was nearly impossible because they would just bail out before they died. I would not like to see those shenanigans in ArmA.

...... auto rotation IS hovering in ArmA, and you cant raise collective and turn off the engines because when you turn the engine off the collective wont work anymore, that whole sentence about what to do in case you have to do an emergency landing makes no sense at all

NO HELO ejection...seriously? enough with abrade features.

This isn't realistic AT ALL. Downvoted!!!

That's a flaw with Arma 3 then, it wasn't like that in Arma 2. Arma 2 is closer to reality with the the collective and cyclic being independent of the engines being on or not.

collective won't work if there is no air, and increasing collective would automatically start engine on EVERY BIS game

Silly me, I meant to say PITCH up (I keep thinking collective for TKOH and then I remember that rotorlib not included..and now I sad again)

Even in a damaged state, even as stubs, the forward momentum should be enough to spin the rotor disk. (I mean relatively high winds can push the rotor on the ground if the brake is not on so forward momentum should be more than enough)

In the end if pilots could bail of the aircraft so safely then I doubt there would be sch a mass push of research for pilot impact safety.

you mean using the speed and turning it to increase the preassure below the chopper? AFAIK that's the most basic manuver for an emergency landing

It is but point being pilots don't bail and if they did then there would not be efforts to engineer devices and safety structures to increase the survival rate for the pilots in the aircraft.

This needs to be implemented, I've been in a glitched chopper that is just sliding along the ground and I could not get out in time since the chopper was moving and I ended up dying after contacting an object.

No one said jumping out of a chopper is a good idea but IRL a pilot on a lot of choppers could bail if need be

that its not true, doctor.

I'm just saying, hypothetically, there are many helicopters that the pilot could unstrap from and jump out mid-flight if the had a death wish. I'm not saying its practical or a good idea but it is feasible

I've fueled Kiowas, Blackhawks and Sikorskys among others while in the Army and all you would need to do to bail out of a Kiowa would be to unhitch yourself and lean out the side so please don't tell me what I'm saying is not true. Whether is is a good idea is a different story though lol

Tell me. You have refueled and most likely mantained many US army choppers. Do all of them have parachutes for the crew and passangers?

"..... auto rotation IS hovering in ArmA"

• what does that mean? because by definition, no.

" and you cant raise collective and turn off the engines because when you turn the engine off the collective wont work anymore"
"collective won't work if there is no air and increasing collective would automatically start engine on EVERY BIS game"

• If you raise the collective and the engine turns back on, then its not dead and you shouldn't be attempting an autorotation - there is no reason to be shutting down an engine mid-flight in arma.

• ...what situation does the collective not have air?

The reason for turning an engine off, mister pete, is for testing, is better if you become familiar to how to land without exploding before hand rather than making your first time the time where you REALLY need to know how to.

If the crew of a chopper does not have parachutes, then making a "bail out" action or ejection action would be useless.

I still laugh at Sensei for thinking ejection seats on helicopters are realistic.

Don't some Russian helicopters have ejection seats?

I think it should be allowed only for specific type of helicopters in config (that should have the ejection system, like Ka-50). I'd vote up if the issue description will be changed accrodingly.

Of course you can eject from (some) helicopters. The rotors are blown off and the pilot is ejected.
Also, landing without utilizing auto-rotation correctly (e.g. engine is not destroyed) is a death sentence.

I upvoted this issue because of the following reasons:

1. No matter what, there's nothing stopping me in real life from jumping out of the pilot or copilot seat of a helicopter. Common sense or not. I want the option.

2. Not everyone follow military/pilot/common sense protocol. I've made and played several missions that features "Civilians with guns" instead of trained personnel.

3. Hovering with a helicopter and jumping out will not get you shredded by the rotor blades.

It's not a question about what you are supposed to do as a pilot. It's about having the option to do it.

If the helicopter is in a hover then sure, if speed exceeds 5knots then neh, reason being is it would otherwise be a return to the Arma1 and 2 times of pilots with a cargo helicopter full of players would either purposely bail to troll, or bail because their helicopter is taking fire and they don't know how to handle it.

Could go the real route and say that all can bail at any time but pilot class never gets a parachute, or limit bailing to a speed limit, thus deterring trolls from sending the aircraft into a full on nose dive at high speeds, thus ensuring the death of all passengers.

As a response to NodUnit's post:

If you are worried about such things, the eject feature should just be a toggle-able feature in the editor, so the mission maker can decide.

I myself only play with a community of players that I know. I know no-one will bail out to troll, and I don't want public servers full of trolls to inhibit an eject (or bail out) feature for "my kind" of ArmA players.

It's ridiculous that more than a year after release, you still can't eject from ANY helicopter as a pilot.

Even more ridiculous is it that there are people with insanely idiot arguments as to why you shouldn't be able to bail out, including but not limited to the following:

Asshole pilots would bail out leaving the crew.<

    So what? By that logic the game should prevent people from firing if they're aiming at a friendly or
    refuse grenades from blowing if friendlies are nearby.

It's unrealistic, you'd get hit by the main rotor<

    Since when did gravity repel objects rather than attract?
    You don't jump out of the side door of a little bird and get pulled up by gravity. Nor would you get sucked up into the main rotor.
    Even if the current was strong enough to do so, the air flow still comes from above down through it.
    There are even helicopters with ejection seats like the KA-50 which detonates small explosive charges on the blades
    to cut them off right before ejection.

You can auto rotate to safety<

Try that with the rotor blown off...

Not all points are bad, but helo pilots are not given parachutes, at least not the medium/light transport ones

"but helo pilots are not given parachutes"

Not all ArmA scenarios are by-the-book military operations though.

Upvoted. It's unrealistic to block this feature.
If pilot want to eject, he will be able to do that.
If ejection kill him, this is his problem.
BIS shouldn't limit player in his choice.

Well, the last 2 comments are making me realize that the people think ArmA is a sandbox and not a military simulator.....

Furthermore, pilots in the game actually spawn with parachutes on, which is silly considering you can't use them.

And the blocking of ejection even on ground also prevents you from leaving the engine on helicopters running, because eject is the only way to leave engines running.

Dr_Death, limit players in their choice is not best solution.
Block the ability to take pilot seat if you have parachute, for example is better solution.

But I think that there is a possibility that pilot can equip parachute in real life.

And why pilot cannot eject when helicopter is 20cm above ground? What will kill hin in this situation?

Dr_Death, this is among the text you will find on the first page of the official ArmA 3 website:

"Experience true combat gameplay in a massive military sandbox."

http://arma3.com/

Go check yourself.

i checked before i shreck'd myself, but you see, ArmA is not the kind of game where "oh, you want X thing but no one else does? Well, make it an option!"

It is true that ArmA does have sandbox elements (wich are mostly due to the editor), but the game is mostly supposed to be (ever since OFP) a domestic simulator of infantry combat.

Paladin, pilots should be able to get into choppers with parachutes, the thing is that pilots should have problems with a big pack on their backs. During WWII pilots had their parachutes under the seats because not everyone can fly with it in their backs.

There must be another alternative.

Talking about that, several medium-cargo choppers in-game have parachutes, it would kinda make sense if the choppers were fit to have paratrooper capabilities (like, AFAIK, the Mi-8)

ArmA III, where the private ranked grenadier in a squad can take the cycle and collective of a helicopters in hands and suddenly fly a helicopter, but can't exit the helicopter once it's a centimeter above the ground. Huh.

Even in DCS, the most realistic flight simulator commercially available, you can eject from helicopters with ejection seats, and bail out of helicopter which don't have.

Also, the eject features was useful to exit the helicopter to switch seats with another player.

Point, there may be a need for a "bail out" option, but ejection seats depend on the chopper, not on the game.

I don't think people here actually want an ejection seat for the helicopters. I don't. When I say eject, I mean like ArmA 2 eject. Not ejection seat eject.

again, how many people will use it for trolling? now "IF" but "HOW MANY"

It doesn't matter, Dr_Death. Trolling is problem of server admins.
Why other players have to suffer because of few trolls.

@Dr_Death: Again, that argument is completely invalid. If we applied that logic to everything we wouldn't be able to fire weapons at friendlies, throw grenades at friendlies, all trees and buildings, and all the water would be removed so you couldn't possibly crash, and helicopters should remain intact regardless of impact power.

And no one is talking about ejection seats. The Ka-50 is the only helicopter I know of that has an ejection seat. But when little birds and other helicopters have doors, I should very damn well be able to open it and bail out.

Good point.

Furthermore, I've heard devs/mods say that you can't leave the Comanche because you can't open the canopy, but that's wrong. The Comanche supports emergency escapes as well.

"RAH-66 emergency escape system.
For emergency egress of the crew station, several provisions in the crew station and procedures are described in the operator’s manual. For emergency situations, the crew may conduct egress through the canopy doors or may jettison the side windows."

It had both glass cutters and detonation charges to remove the windows, so we should damn well be able to bail out of that as well.

"32 of the trials involved emergency egress through the left or right window after a simulated ignition of the window jettison system via the D-ring grasp handle between the pilot’s legs. Our mock- up used Plexiglas9 screens to replicate the canopy windows, which we simply removed before emergency egress trials involving exits through the windows. After the pilot jettisons the windows in a real aircraft with the pyrotechnic charge, there will certainly be glass shards around the edges of the windows over which a pilot must crawl to leave the crew station. These shards may slow emergency egress and probably cause minor laceration injuries to the pilot."

The fact that this report has received so many down votes is sad. It shows that people either insist on flying with people who they know will grief them just so they can down vote this, or they're just brainless sheep following the majority.

It it pretty much impossible to eject from a flying helicopter as pilot, simply because he is stuck between the control elements and if he leaves them, they will go into their neutral position and change flight direction OR the pilot bumps into something (like the collective) and it is pushed down.

I peronally would rather crash and die by keeping the helicopter stable for the passengers to bail. I am concerned that real pilots would do that too.
Also I am sure that it would be abused to kill/"troll" teammates.

Maybe the Co-pilot could bail out of the Mohawk/Orca/Huron when the pilot keeps it in level. But the pilot could definiteley not eject.

@MulleDK19:
The window jettison is probably more for when the helicopter crashes and catches fire (or when it is too damaged to exit properly) , so that the crew can bail before they get burnt alive/get stuck. (In arma you just explode in a crash and die instantly...)
I am not 100% sure but it is extremely doughtful that they would jump out of the helicopter. Also they don't even have parachutes.

Pilot can bail out. But if he do that in some conditions, he will die.

Pilot will not die if he bail out at 1m above ground.

if you are at 1m above ground then land it. Unless there is an irregular terrain or objects that can destroy the chopper there is no point in bailing out 1 meter above terrain, if you can land, land, if you are going too fast, bailing out would kill you.

The main reason - you are far from land and your engine is broken, you have not enough power of autorotation to land helicopter on terrain. You have to land it to sea. In this situation you can bail out and save your life. But nowadays pilots die with helicopters.

right, i forgot about the sea and that every vehicle explodes when they touch the water in the game.

SilverDude. Helicopter have trimming (In modern helicopters at least). Releasing the cycle will not reset into neutral position. A pilot can release the controls of a helicopter and the helicopter will not change a thing.

"I peronally would rather crash and die by keeping the helicopter stable for the passengers to bail."
Why do you give such specific examples? What if you are alone in the helicopter?
Please, please stop giving the troll/abuse argument as a reason against it. It's not valid in any way.

There is such a large amount of ignorance in this issue. Don't say that a pilot definitely can't eject when he sure as hell can.

@Echo

1. You are right with that point, but what if you are hit and the helicopter is extremely unstable? Leaving would be very hard to comply. Except you are sitting in a Hummingbird where you could throw yourself out to the side.

2. I try to imagine how things would be, not how things should be. And even if you were alone you would have to keep it stable, walk to the back of the copper, open the door and bail out. With a destroyed engine impossible.

3. It is just not safe to bail as pilot. It is not like GTA where you jump out of any kind of air vehicle and always survive if you have a chute.

If it gets added, then there should be a risk by doing that.

Btw: Show me a video where a pilot jumps out of a (blades off/or tail off/or engine out) heicopter with a parachute and survives. Then I would support this.

Here is a video that might be interesting for everyone, but remember it is a plane and not a helicopter. Also everyone has a parachute and is ready to jump anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6hqMnsLFY

Sounds like you guys need to practice your autorotation. Yeah, a pilot can "eject" by bailing out of the helicopter. But especially now with the helicopters DLC, helicopters are *extremely* resilient to crash landings, I hardly think an eject feature is required.

But don't beg for a feature just because you don't have the ability to properly autorotate a helicopter.

@Dr_Death - sounds like you haven't played the game in a few years. Much earlier on in development they fixed that issue; it is now quite easy to land on water and then bail out safely before the helicopter sinks and eventually explodes.

@SilverDude

There are so many variables and examples. The point is not that 'eject = safe'. The point is, if there is a situation where the conditions are right, you should have the option to bail out. That's the point. Not all situations can be handled by the book.

You, again, give a very specific scenario here. What if you're not in a helicopter that requires you to 'walk to the back of the chopper'? (for example, the hummingbird)

I agree, that if it would be added, there should be a risk, if you use the eject feature in certain conditions (high velocities, violent spinning etc.)

@the_Demongod

Autorotation is cakewalk in ArmA. That's not the point.

There is a contradiction in Arma 3:

• you can eject from driver seat at any speed, even if you die after that;
• you cannot eject from pilot seat if helicopter is 10 cm above the ground with 0 vertical and horizontal speed.

Btw, Dr_Death, I didn't see trolls on servers that kills their passengers with eject from driver seat.

I agree that it should be possible to "eject," but it shouldn't be a midair bailout sort of thing, it should be to make it possible to jump out of a helicopter that is out of control extremely low to or on the ground.

my chopper still explodes on contact with the water/the game wont let me exit the chopper and forces me to drown.

Using the enhanced chopper flymodel, beta dev updates version.

maybe they broke it with the new update, but it works fine for me in stable and always has.

I wanted to add there are ejection systems in some attack helicoter like mi 28. They use a detonation cord to blow away the rotor blades before they blow out the pilot and the gunner.

• What if add some trigger to program - if the rotor destroyed, pilot gets function to Eject.

• Pilots of Mi-28 have the system that allows them to emergency leave the helicopter without ejecting blades of the rotor. (It works like in fighter jets, but simply pushes them in the horizontal direction instead of vertical)

• There is two main situations: 1 - Pilot want to eject when the helicopter moves mostly horizontally, the same situation when it is possible to paratroopers to eject. In this situation it is unfairly that pilots can't access abilities that are accessible for them who sitting in 2 meters back. 2 - Pilot want to eject when the helicopter moves mostly vertically to the ground, that what creates a dangerous situation when after ejecting - you can hit some part of the helicopter.

• There was the issue some time ago, when paratroopers was hitting the rotors and helicopter lose its rotor. Maybe this code will allow to create a simple system for pilots. They can eject, but if they hit the rotor, they will be wounded ?

• It is also sometimes useful for gameplay when helicopter moves on the ground

Please, if you agree with me, let's bring a life to that ticket!