I spoke to a Hornet pilot that ejected up here, he was under the command of a friend of mine who is the CO now of the fighter test/eval unit, but had the demonstration pilot under his command back before that. It was 5 or 6 years ago, his F18 had a problem with one engine at very low alt doing a high alpha air show pass, and it stalled, which stalled the airflow over the wing, etc etc etc, and he pulled the handle at very, very low altitude. Brian Bews is his name. He was lucky, he had pain and took 6 months to recover, but by month 7 was back in the cockpit, and now lives a couple blocks from where I am now, and is a fighter lead in course instructor on the Hawk trainer. He told me it was sort of a good news/bad news ejection, while he was at low altitude, he was also at very low airspeed, which means less wind shock/violence from ejecting into a 4 or 500 knot wind blast - or higher - yet due to the attitude of the plane the seat had to fire it's thrusters to right the seat, which puts more G on a different angle/plane on the ejection than one straight and level would. His thought process that he talks about is interesting, how in a just an instant he recalls thinking through the possibility of landing the jet still on one motor, then seeing it depart, and thinking about people on the ground, and then actually making the "it's too late to do anything but bounce" decision and then yanking the handle.
I had a high school friend, Cliff DeJong, whose father died while we were in school together, having conciously stayed in a malfunctioning Snowbird air demo jet to get it away from the crowds (he reported this on the radio comms), and then once clear tried ejecting, but something failed in the system and he rode it in and died. It's a serious thing, having to eject. Or not to, especially deciding not to in order to save others.
Video of the Lethbridge Hornet crash Brian Bews survived, and was 100% after about 6 months he said, with no loss of height or back problems now 6 years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HDIxzSMp-0
