On November 24th, Trevor Jacob set off and documented a trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to spread the ashes of his friend. However, the trip didn't go as planned.
Jacob, a former 2014 Olympic snowboarder, has perhaps received the wrong type of attention from his video, with many people accusing him of staging the crash to gain views. Currently, all comments and like/dislike buttons on the video are disabled, and I can only speculate that this is due to the incident being investigated by the FAA and not due to trolls, as a lot can be learned from this incident, both from a creator's point of view and also YouTube itself.
The Journey
The 16-minute video documents Jacob's journey from takeoff, exiting the aircraft at altitude after an engine failure, to him hiking through thick brush to the crash site, eventually getting help, and finally with him scattering his friend's ashes and paragliding. At the heart of it, this is a very respectful tribute to his best friend, but the video itself has sparked a lot of controversy online.
A Lot of Questions
Everything is alleged, and I'd like to take careful note that at the moment that that's all they are, allegations. I am glad he is ok, but there are a lot of unanswered questions, which I am sure the FAA will investigate thoroughly.
Other videos and articles are popping up with similar questions, and to be honest, some are legitimate. Camera angles, landing places, Mayday calls, engine restarts. Why weren't the cockpit cameras retrieved? Why are you wearing a parachute in this video but not the others? so many questions currently are left unanswered. However, these are all speculative, with some accusatory, but the thing is these people were not there, and the FAA will decide the outcome.
The Bigger Question?
Now, whether indeed this was staged for views or a really unfortunate incident and a lucky escape for Trevor, you have to ask yourself the question: could this spark copycat videos for views on YouTube? Trevor states in the video: "...a lot of pilots can learn from my experience." Perhaps the title, "I Crashed My Plane," is a little too much clickbait for that type of video, but with 359,000 views at the moment, that's a decent amount of revenue from YouTube in its first 11 days.
Hypothetically speaking, if this was done for views, is this a step too far? Is this traveling somewhere where we need to set a line and never cross? If so, where will it end? Even though some may be tempted, it's not worth doing something unsafe just for views.
There are many high-risk videos on YouTube these days, and I wholeheartedly respect what these people do. It takes guts and determination to learn their craft and to be good at it, knowing the risks and what's involved. At the same time, however, there are a lot of easily influenced people out there who will go to any length to get the views. Could videos like this one spark a whole new line of copycats who will do anything for fame?
You can check out Trevor's lucky escape above and decide for yourself.
Crashing a plane for 359k views when there are silly videos of cats with 4M views doesn't seem like a great deal.
Now imagine a cat crashing the same plane - 100M views guaranteed!
I can appreciate a natural cynicism toward social media, but nothing about his experience looks staged and certainly the risk would not be worth a paltry amount of views.
He made some very... questionable aviation decisions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRSZuC84CEg
yeah, it seems questionable for sure. i'm also hesitant to jump right toward "staged" considering the risks/fines/endangerment/idiocy of it all. the money involved in a little sponsorship or even a few million views is not much.
I’m not knowledgeable about planes or aviation, but I’ve seen multiple videos of pilots saying he did not go through many of the proper steps that a pilot would go through in this situation. These pilots seem to fall anywhere between suspicious to saying this is probably staged.
“ These pilots seem to fall anywhere between suspicious to saying this is probably staged.”
I myself only have a private pilot license, but I agree with that statement. No emergency procedure? And leaving the aircraft, letting it crash anywhere randomly?
Crashing a plan and polluting environment for youtube revenue. Our species deserved to get extinct.
It seems like a huge expense for a little publicity, and parachuting into that terrain looks life-threatening. But I have to say at 2:53 in Trevor's video, it looks like he could turn back to flat terrain. And did he make a mayday call while he was high enough to have radio coverage?
The video says enough about the guy before he even starts flying.
"I'm going to spread my friends ashes. And I care so much about "him", so I keep "him" in this ziplock bag and I will talk about him for 5 seconds.... Oh and don't forget to use code xxxx to buy a wallet that I'll talk about for a full minute"
That seems very respectful to your friend. I sure do hope my friends will carry me around in a ziplock bag one day to promote wallets.
"..a lot of pilots can learn from my experience."
Sure, I'll forget my aviation training and all my flight experience.
- And forget that a plane can go a significant distance even when the engine is turned off.
(from that height most planes can easily glide 10-15 miles, *depending on terrain*..and there are roads and flat ground within 6 miles of his crash location).
- I will not trim the aircraft for a glide (he didn't do this, or the plane wouldn't have pitched down as much as it did when he bailed)
- And not look for a landing site (As mentioned, many within 6 miles. Or otherwise the riverbeds would have worked. Especially in a small plane, designed to land in short distances and "off runway"-fields
- And I will also not try to restart my engine in such a situation... (seriously?)
- I will also forget not to contact the emergency radio frequency with an emergency call to note my position to any air traffic controllers or other aircraft that might be listening.
- Instead I'll yell Holy*** over and over again, flying deeper into the mountains and then throw myself out of the plane, while making sure I bring my selfie stick.
Makes sense. I've learned so much!
Looked into it all.. a lot of red flags in the whole thing besides the ones listed here...
- the door was already open at the time of the engine cut. (Not a huge red flag, but could indicate that he looked for a parachute landing site before the engine was turned off)
- apparently the plane was for sale 2 months prior as a "parts" plane without certificates.
Sources inside the Lompoc airport said it appeared Jacob never intended to make the full journey to Mammoth. They described the aircraft as in a state of disrepair and in need of major maintenance. Jacob attempted to complete a few fixes on his own, the sources claimed, but seemed to struggle.
- There are reports that he flew above that exact area 3 days prior, flying circles above the area. Perhaps he was looking for parachute landing locations. And the tracking data of those flights have apparently been removed through law firms.
and a whole list of other things..
Hope this ends in some jail time for the clown.
I dont think the FAA will have a better report than yours. Very detailed and logical analysis!
Thanks, but there is a lot they can investigate further.
- Demanding all RAW footage for example. (if he hasn't deleted those already)
- testimonies of airport staff
- Complete maintenance and service records.
(maintenance that he done himself still need to be signed off by an FAA approved engineer)-
- Fuel records. (Did he actually bring enough fuel for the trip, or did he take less intentionally as he wasn't planning to do the full trip), it would appear that he had fuel on board still, according to the fuel indicator.
- Checking the if the fuel was ok. (from the pump)
- They would have been able to deal with the wreckage and investigate it. Making sure levers and such were in correct positions. (but, some reports are saying that Jacob chartered a helicopter and had it removed.. something that the FAA should have been involved with, but the FAA possibly wasn't even informed at that point *according to staff at the airport*)
But, if that wasn't the case, they could be checking wether or not there was intentionally something done there to shut down the engine or prevent the restart. As a restart in this type of plane is quite.. simple.. make sure the ignition is on, dive down a bit to make the wind spin the propellor (which is something that you can see happening in the video) and that will jumpstart the engine in most cases.
So, it depends how much evidence they can gather (that hasn't possibly been tampered with already) No idea if they can gather enough to prove that it's intentional.. there might be infringements on some rules around the reporting, tampering, maintenance, etc.. and the FAA probably only cares about those kinds of rules.. not if it was an intentional stunt, or his piss poor decision making (if it wasn't intentional).. they'll look at books and rules... and take 1-2 years to do so.
But I hope they can get enough to charge him. the sooner this guy is removed from the air, the better. As he has several "near death" clickbait videos in airplanes. Perhaps it's time to stop him from going near them.
And here he is, getting more views.
This is akin to the Vice President and President Of the United States, comparing Jan 6, 2020 incident to 911 and Pearl Harbor. Most pathetic identification of that incident to the Horror on 911. So was the crash staged? have no idea. But if is a Trump supporter, you can bet he will be charged with spying from an airplane, not withstanding FAA will fry him. My rant for the day
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. There's one in every chat. OMG.
Trolls out of their cages, Yikes
He is wearing a head set with a boom mike which tells me he had an on board radio. Why didn't he contact ATC he was having engine troubles and the plane was going down in an area with rough terrain. As a pilot he could have told them an approximate location, this would have alerted other pilots in the area to be on the look out. As the old saying goes, There are Old Pilots and Bold Pilots but there are no Old Bold Pilots.
I'll admit i've never watched one of this guys previous videos, but just the way this whole thing was setup seems ridiculous and suspicious. I hope he goes to jail if found to have faked this, which seems very likely with the extreme length's he went to hide the evidence.
As an ex-skydiver the first thing that shocks me is that he's wearing "normal" skydiving gear (the kind that you use when you don't want to land with the plane).
It's much bulkier than the standard emergency chutes and really not practical in such a small plane.
well to be fair, he's a skydiver too with quite of bit of experience. Far more than he's a pilot.
I can somewhat (with the benefit of the doubt) understand that if you are a skydiver, and you already have a couple of chutes laying around. That you might think "meh, I'll just take this one and deal with it" instead of investing in an proper emergency parachute that would run you another 2-3 grand or so.. perhaps you can "deal with the bulkiness" if that saves you 3 grand.
Obviously the investment into a proper chute is worth it if you wear the parachute on every flight, something he claims he does (but he doesn't wear one in any of his videos).. guess he didn't want to make the 3 grand investment for the 1 video.