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Originally Posted by speede5
That looks like contact was made between the two. Those L39's are deathtraps, any fast jet without a bang seat is, imo. Sad to see.
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It definitely had an ejection seat, because the SWAT team had to be called out to detonate it in the field where it went in because it was too unstable to move. From what I was reading about the L39, the seats are so unreliable that many pilots just leave the safety pins in so they don't get randomly ejected.
A friend I went to college with was telling be back in like 2005ish that his dad worked at this place that rehabs various Soviet bloc aircraft to sell to rich folks, and they also make a ton of money renting out their services as aggressors against the US military. Hhe told me that the company had 2 Mig-29s, but I didn't believe him. When I was looking into the company after this crash, I found this article which confirms that this little company in southern Illinois has the only 2 privately owned Mig-29s in the world.
Building Your Own Air Force, One Mig at a Time -Wired