Remember the YouTuber who crashed a plane? These are the consequences

An amateur pilot and YouTuber from the US has been jailed for six months for deliberately crashing his plane into a national park to get more clicks.

As US authorities announced on Monday (local time), the prison sentence is for Trevor Jacob determined in an amicable settlement. Initially he faced a prison sentence of twenty years.

What happened?

Jacob had published a spectacular video of the crash and its consequences on the internet platform YouTube; it has been viewed more than three million times. According to US authorities, he had… the accident that occurred in Southern California in November 2021but specifically staged and then hampered the investigation.

Jacob, now 30 years old, filmed himself with a selfie stick and parachuted from the crashing plane over dense vegetation in Los Padres National Park in November 2021. Cameras were mounted throughout the plane, recording the descent of the out-of-control single-engine plane and its crash.

Jacob’s audience also watched as the pilot climbed to the wreckage of his plane after the crash and was apparently disappointed to discover that the water supplies he had packed were no longer there. Jacob showed how he wandered through forests and over hills looking for help, repeatedly talking about how thirsty he was and how helpless he felt.

When he finally stopped at a water source, a vehicle passed by in the staged footage and rescued the pilot in time for nightfall.

How did the authorities respond?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) opened an investigation into the crash and ordered Jacob not to dispose of the plane’s wreckage due to possible investigation.

The pilot told authorities he did not know where the wreckage was, but according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, he and a friend recovered the wreckage from the woods in a helicopter two weeks after the crash. He had previously backed up the data from the onboard cameras.

According to the investigation, over the next few days, in violation of official orders, Jacob cut his plane into small pieces and threw them into trash bins in and around the Lompoc City airport. He later admitted that he tried to obstruct federal authorities’ investigation and had previously lied when reporting an aviation accident. The FAA revoked his pilot’s license in April.

Jacob apparently made some mistakes in organizing the crash. A number of pilots and aviation experts pointed out that the YouTuber did not take even the simplest steps to restart the engine of the crash-prone plane.

Others noted that Jacob could have made a safe landing while gliding. It is also extremely unusual for a pilot in a small aircraft to carry a parachute on his back only in an emergency.

According to prosecutors’ findings, Jacob staged the crash “most likely to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to benefit financially.” “Yet this kind of ‘daredevil’ behavior cannot be tolerated,” the prosecutor emphasized.

Sources

(t-online/dsc)