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Jordan Simeonov was fascinated by the men
who, as pilots in the Bulgarian Air Force, had to bail out of their aircraft in
emergencies. His gallery, showing some of them, is on the theme of Air.
“The pilots are interesting because they have experience of dangerous
situations,” says Jordan, a thirty-four-year-old staff photographer for a daily
newspaper in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and a WPPh seminar attendee four years
ago.
“They are ready to pay with their lives. Not everybody has this courage.”
“This is an extremely dangerous and risky procedure. The overloading when the seat is launched means the pilot goes out at very high speed - he is 20 times his own weight - and there is the very real possibility of technical failure,” continues Jordan.
“It is an experience on the verge of life and death and a lot of pilots are injured or die."
" Some of those who have gone through this ordeal refuse to repeat it, even when
given the order to do so”.
Jordan has not yet finished his portfolio of pilots and when he has, he intends to publish it as a book.
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Angel Kibarski bailed out when he was a young pilot. Performing a figure called drill, when the aircraft is rotating around its axis, Angel could not pull out and – with the aircraft falling at very high speed - it was not clear whether he had done something wrong or there had been a technical failure. In the subsequent investigation Angel decided to blame himself. Later on he had a successful career as a military pilot and then graduated in medicine and worked in civil aviation.
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