YouTuber who staged plane crash faces up to 20 years jail: US officials
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Dramatic footage shows Trevor Jacob ejecting from the single engine plane and parachuting into a forest in California.
PHOTO: SCREENGRAB FROM TREVORJACOB/YOUTUBE
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LOS ANGELES – A YouTuber pilot who bailed out in mid-air and deliberately sent his plane crashing to bolster viewing numbers on his channel could be jailed for up to 20 years, United States authorities said on Thursday.
In a video seen by nearly three million people and entitled “I crashed my airplane”, Trevor Jacob appears to experience engine trouble while flying over southern California in November 2021.
The dramatic footage shows Jacob, 29, ejecting from the single engine plane – selfie-stick in hand – and parachuting into the dense vegetation of the Los Padres National Forest.
Cameras placed all over the aircraft show its out-of-control descent into the forest, and its eventual crash landing.
Jacob films himself hiking to the wreckage where he appears dismayed to discover the water he packed has disappeared.
Viewers see him bush-whacking through poison oak and over hills as he seemingly struggles to find civilisation, giving regular updates about how thirsty he is, and how lost he feels.
Finally, he stops to scoop water from a stream, and moments later comes across a vehicle and apparent salvation as night falls.
In the weeks after the incident, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched a probe and Jacob was ordered to preserve the wreckage.
The YouTuber told officials he did not know where the plane had gone down. But according to a plea deal lodged in Los Angeles, two weeks after the drama, he and a friend winched the wreckage out of the forest with a helicopter, having earlier recovered data from the onboard cameras.
Over the next few days, he cut up the plane into small pieces and dumped the parts in trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport.
The FAA, the body that regulates flying in the US, yanked his pilot’s licence in April 2022.
In a plea agreement, Jacob admitted he intended to obstruct federal authorities when he disposed of the wreckage, and that he created the video to make money through a sponsorship with a wallet company.
“Jacob further admitted he lied to federal investigators when he submitted a... report that falsely indicated that the aircraft experienced a full loss of power approximately 35 minutes after take-off,” a statement from the Department of Justice said.
“Jacob also lied to an FAA aviation safety inspector when he said the airplane’s engine had quit and, because he could not identify any safe landing options, he had parachuted out of the plane.”
He has agreed to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, a crime that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
The YouTuber is expected to formally enter his plea in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, and be sentenced at a later date.
The video he posted attracted a lot of criticism.
Numerous pilots and aviation experts commented that Jacob failed to take even elementary steps to restart his plane’s apparently troubled engine.
Others pointed out that he could easily have safely glided the plane to a landing spot, and that wearing a parachute while flying a small aircraft was highly unusual. AFP
