When I gave my post a one over before posting it I deleted most of the second paragraph which was publicly criticizing former CNATRAs and the handling of the sequencing problems in the T-6 because I thought it better to not have that tidbit coming from me. It wasn't defending that its okay that there is an aircraft that is not being operated as designed, it was stating that bailing out of an uncontrollable aircraft on a static line is difficult and risky itself. The fact that this has become normal ops and not a stop gap is in fact a scary thing for us as a community. I'll go make a fresh pot of coffee for the mess now...
An "uncontrollable" aircraft and an "out of control" aircraft are two different things. If you nick lead and lose a wing, sure, life will be severely more sucky trying to get out by bailing vs. ejecting. But generally, that's not when folks have had to bail out of a T-34. Typically, it's been due to random things (bird strikes, fires, etc) or due to OCF. Both are actually fairly low speed evolutions. Although spins will happen very fast and bailing out will need to happen ASAP, the actual airflow/tail impact problem isn't as big of a statistically relevant thing to worry about.
I'm not privy to the T-6 ejection details, but from someone who's only option was bailing out, I'd rather risk rolling off the edge of the wing in a spin than hoping my stud can wait x number of seconds so he doesn't burn my face/pull a Goose mid-flight. Obviously either situation provides no "good" solution.
