YouTuber Trevor Jacob demonstrated a ‘lack of care, judgement, and responsibility’
A YouTuber who filmed himself in a plane crash has had his pilot’s license revoked after it was found that he carried out the crash deliberately for the sake of a video.
On November 24 last year, Trevor Jacob was flying over California’s Los Padres national forest in his 1940 Taylorcraft BL-65 when the propeller stopped working.
Whilst in the cockpit he tells the camera: “I’m over the mountains and I … have an engine out.”
He then jumps out the plane with a selfie stick and parachutes into an open field.
Footage from cameras attached to the plane then shows it crashing into wilderness.
Jacob later uploaded the footage to YouTube to his 135,000 subscribers, in a video titled ‘I Crashed My Plane.’ It has since been viewed more than 2.2m times.
But on April 11, the Federal Aviation Administration announced its judgement on the incident, concluding that Jacob had crashed his plane as a stunt and that they have revoked his pilot license.
In a letter the administration wrote: “On November 24, 2021, 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.”
The FAA pointed to the fact that the YouTuber had attached several cameras to the outside of the aircraft, including one pointing in the direction of the propeller “in order to record video footage of the outside and inside of the plane during the flight.”
Other evidence used by the FAA included the fact Jacob had put on a sport parachute backpack before the flight, that he opened the left side pilot door before saying that the engine had failed, and that he didn’t contact air traffic control before jumping out the plane or make any attempt to restart the engine.
The FAA also noted that he did not make any attempt to search for a safe place to land, even though there were several “within gliding range.”
He also continued to film the aircraft during its descent.
Jacob even went as far as recovering and disposing of the plane wreckage himself.
In response to the ruling, Jacob posted a video on Sunday (April 24) filming himself on the way to the post office to hand in his pilot’s licence.
In the video he claims the aviation community “has been pretty tough” on him, adding that he is “thinking about quitting altogether and giving up, just because I’m hated.”
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