Youtuber’s fake plane crash stunt nosedives
Pilot staged an emergency bail-out to get more online viewers, watchdog finds as it revokes his licence
YOUTUBER Trevor Jacob couldn’t have picked a better day to fly his 1940 Taylorcraft single-engine plane.
What followed next over the Californian mountains made for spectacular footage: Jacob readied his parachute and bailed out of the door, leaving the plane to smash into the mountainside, all of which was filmed on Jacob’s selfie stick, which he managed to grab before jumping out.
He said he was “lucky to be alive,” adding: “This is why I always fly with a parachute.” His video, titled “I crashed my plane”, garnered millions of views online.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took something of a dim view: the body has found that it was all a deliberate stunt, that his actions put lives in danger, and that he should have his pilot’s licence immediately revoked.
In his video, uploaded last Christmas Eve, cameras inside the cockpit, on the wing and on the tail captured Jacob taking off from Lompoc City Airport in Santa Barbara. Suddenly, the propeller stopped spinning and the aircraft started gliding. Jacob said in the video: “Holy s---. I’m over the mountains and I have an engine out.” The plane’s impact was also caught on multiple cameras. He landed safely and was later rescued by local farmers.
The FAA noted that the number of cameras set up, the fact that he was already wearing a parachute and that he opened the door mid-flight – before the claimed engine failure – all cast doubt on his claims that it was genuine.
They also found that he made no attempt to contact air traffic control, no attempt to restart the engine, and no attempt to find a safe place to land.
The FAA told Jacob: “There were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing.” They revoked his private pilot’s licence, judging that he operated the aircraft in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another”.
The FAA added: “You demonstrated a lack of care, judgment and responsibility by choosing to jump out of an aircraft solely so you could record the footage of the crash. Your egregious and intentional actions on these dates indicate that you presently lack the degree of care, judgment and responsibility required of a certificate holder.” Another person added: “As a pilot community we take hundreds of hours training to keep the aircraft safe and sound up in the air. This guy feels like it’s the opposite to what I’ve ever done as a pilot.”
In a video posted by Jacob at the weekend, titled “The FAA took my pilots licence”, the former Olympic snowboarder said: “I didn’t think that just posting a video of an adventure gone south would ruffle so many feathers.” Jacob appeared wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with: “Always wear your parachute”.
He asked his followers to purchase merchandise from his online shop to support his legal fees.when asked if he will ever try to get his licence back and fly a plane again, he said: “The aviation community has been pretty tough on me, so I’m thinking about quitting altogether and giving up, just because I’m hated.”