A YouTuber Has Been Accused Of Crashing A Plane For The Views
A YouTuber has been accused of crashing his plane for internet clout and now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating the incident.
Trevor Jacob is a former Olympic snowboarder and a YouTuber with 130,000 subscribers.
Three weeks ago he posted the video 'I Crashed My Plane', which has reached over 1 million views on the platform.
In the video, he parachuted from a Taylorcraft BL64 plane before filming it crashing into the hills of the Los Padres National Forest in California.
The light, single-engine, plane was purchased recently, and he had planned to fly from Santa Barbara to Mammoth Lakes.
He was aiming to do some paragliding and snowboarding while in the area, as well as spread the ashes of his friend, Johnny Strange, who died in a wingsuit accident in 2015.
Jacob claimed that during the flight the plane lost power, stalled, and could not be restarted.
This was when he put it nose-down and leapt from it, letting it crash into the ground. He filmed his exit from the plane, saying 'this is why I always fly with a parachute' and then trekked back to the wreckage.
He was found by a farmer, who he says saved his life.
Then Jacob posted the video to YouTube, which is where the trouble really begins for him (you know, aside from crashing a $10,000+ plane).
Aviation experts online immediately began picking the story apart, with the majority of the comments calling him out for staging the crash.
Comments have since been turned off the video, but numerous reaction and explanation videos have popped up, pointing out all the issues with his story.
There have also been questions online as to whether Jacob has trimmed down the original video and reposted an edited version, although the original cut can be found online and in the reaction videos that popped up before the first cut was removed.
One of the first questions levelled at Jacob is that his claim that he 'always wears a parachute' appears to be false, as he has posted numerous videos of him flying without wearing one.
While some of his videos do feature him wearing one, a lot of small aircraft pilots have said they actually don't fly regularly with one, because light planes have such little space.
Jacob was also wearing a particular type of parachute, made for him to exit the plane like he did.
He's also been called out for the fact that he seems to have two fire extinguishers strapped to his legs, which is not a typical choice when flying a light plane (or any plane).
There are several concerns over instruments that appear to be turned off in the video, why he chose to hike back to the wreck if there were no emergency supplies in it anyway, and whether his mistakes were a case of him being a rookie, or that he had planned for the event.
Another YouTuber, Trent Palmer, claims another of Jacob's planes was spotted circling the area days before the flight.
The Drive says Jacob also reportedly told the person he purchased the plane from that he was 'going to do something special' with it.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt here, he could have just meant spreading Strange's ashes.
But America's Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has started an investigating into the situation, according to AVWeb, to work out exactly what happened.
Local flight instructor Bob Perry told the Independent that the plane could have coasted at least 30 kilometres without an engine and that there were several places Jacob could have landed it, although given his rookie status as a pilot he may not have known this.
If the FAA finds him guilty of deliberately crashing his plane, which may take years, he could have his pilot license revoked or face other repercussions.
Topics: News, Trevor Jacob, YouTube
Hannah Blackiston