A Silk Necktie Is The Symbol For The Most Grateful Club Of Military Pilots

There's no such thing as a routine flight in a military jet. Whether it be a training exercise or an actual sortie, pilots have to be prepared for things to go catastrophically wrong. For pilots, that crucial tool of last resort is the ejection seat. Martin-Baker gifts a necktie to every aviator saved by using one of its seats. It's a modest token to pilots who are simply grateful to escape a fiery death strapped to a doomed aircraft.

Martin-Baker is nearly ubiquitous with ejection seats. The British manufacturer exclusively supplies seats to the U.S. Navy, the F-35 across all services and essentially every NATO jet built in Europe. Since the first in-service ejection in 1949, Martin-Baker claims that its seats have saved over 7,800 lives. It didn't take long for a culture to develop among pilots and aircrews around the company's ejection seats.

After a Royal Air Force pilot bailed out of his fighter jet over Rhodesia in 1957, company co-founder James Martin created the Tie Club. According to The Wall Street Journal, Martin-Baker assigns every ejection survivor a number. Then, the fortunate aviator must contact the company to provide their ejection date and an incident description. In return, they receive a navy blue silk necktie dotted with red triangles, a jet's ejection seat warning decal. Tie Club members also receive a certificate, membership card, patch and pin. There are over 6,000 registered members.

Most Martin-Baker Tie Club members wear the ties at airshows and other gatherings to be recognized by their peers and as a sign of gratitude. While the gifts and camaraderie are great, most ejection survivors are just happy to be alive. Brandon Michaelis, Member #5,657, survived a head-on collision in his F/A-18 Hornet during a 2010 training night flight. He said in a Martin-Baker promotional video:

"So I think about the people behind the systems, the engineering, the components because, believe it or not, thank you is not enough. I mean, how do you say thank you to someone that goes to work every day and works on something they hope never gets used, I hope never gets used, but when it does, you get one chance to get it right. But if a thank you from me and my family is enough, then I gotta give it to them every single day if I could. I really would."

The Tie Club package has gotten an upgrade in the 21st century. Bremont partnered with Martin-Baker in 2009 to design the MBI, a watch exclusively for members. However, the ejection seat producer isn't giving these silver watches away for free. The watchmaker stated that the timepieces have a retail value of $5,000, and they sell them at a loss. Typically, Tie Club members don't buy the watches for themselves. Fellow pilots pool their money together to pay for it as a gift, a token of appreciation that their friend is still with them.