FAA: YouTuber Crashed His Own Plane For The Views

The New York Times reports:

The Federal Aviation Administration has found that Trevor Jacob, a daredevil YouTuber who posted a video of himself last year parachuting out of a plane that he claimed had malfunctioned, purposely abandoned the aircraft and allowed it to crash into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California.

In a letter to Mr. Jacob on April 11, the F.A.A. said he had violated federal aviation regulations and operated his single-engine plane in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.”

The agency said it would immediately revoke Mr. Jacob’s private pilot certificate, effectively ending his permission to operate any aircraft. Reached by email on Wednesday, Mr. Jacob appeared unaware of the F.A.A.’s ruling and replied, “Where’d you get that information?”

The New York Post reports:



In the original video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Dec. 24, Jacob seems to panic mid-flight as his engine stops working.

“Holy s–t. I’m over the mountains and I have an engine out,” he says after the propeller appears to stop spinning in the 13-minute video titled “I Crashed My Plane,” which has garnered over 2 million views.

Suddenly, he jumps out of the plane, footage from a plane wing shows. The video cuts to Jacob filming himself with a selfie stack rapidly free-falling before panning back to the plane — now without a pilot – as it begins to veer on its own crash course.