Definitely seems sketchy, and likely fake.

I Just watched it. A few observations...
1. The plane glides by itself after "engine failure" to a very landable looking wash!

2. He has a sky diving parachute on and he just happens to be at sky diving altitude over not very tall mountains.

3. The fuel control valve flopping around inside not attached...He probably ran it out of fuel so not to start a fire. I'm glad he remembered to grab his selfie stick on the way out in that near death experience!

4. The "farmers" that found him looked fake too. City slicker shoes. Probably were his buddies he texted to bring him more batteries for the cameras.

Looks fake as hell.

I can't adequately express how much I despise this turd.

Ruined a good airplane. Small airplanes are scarce. Endangered people on the ground. Created a hazardous waste problem for whoever owned the crash site.

I'm 99.9999999% sure this was staged. He makes money off YouTube, I have zero doubt he saw this as a great money making opportunity.

I am an inactive private pilot, and have been an airplane nut since birth. Here's what I see as suspicious.

1) Wearing a parachute. No one, and I mean no one, routinely wears a parachute while flying a small plane. The exception is anyone doing aerobatic training. As someone pointed out, these old planes are small, designed for the average male of 1940. You're going to have to at least remove the seat cushions. Unless you lose control, staying with a small plane with a dead engine is safer than parachuting, 90% of the time.

2) Cameras. Way too many cameras for a routine flight. Jumping with a selfie stick is the biggest red flag.

3) Altitude. These are little planes with small engines, maybe 50hp. It takes a long time to climb that high. No need to do so, unless you need the altitude to do something else....like parachuting.

4) "Have to jump out". No, he did not. The plane had an engine failure, but it only weighs about 900 pounds (including the pilot) and can glide long distances. I'm going to guess he was somewhere around 5,000 feet above ground level. With the engine dead, he could glide about 1.7 miles per 1000 feet elevation.

So any flat spot within 8 and a half miles radius (227 square miles) was within his glide range. The flat spot only had to be 500 feet long...less than 2 football fields. And the video plainly showed several dry river beds, directly below his plane. He might bend the plane a little, but it would be a rough landing, at worst.

Also, the stall speed of the aircraft is incredibly low...35 miles per hour. A Dalmatian dog can run faster than that. Even if he had to land in a wooded area, he could be flying incredibly slow, aim between trees to take impact on the wings, and have a very survivalable crash.

5) Door. The camera showing the cabin door clearly shows it ajar, before the engine quits. Almost as if he expected the engine to quit.

6) Controls. What in Hades is he doing yanking the yoke forward and back when the engine quit. Very weird, not needed. Was it performance art?

7) His rescuers. I didn't think I saw enough of them to call them farmers or not. But it appears to me they picked him up a long way from a farm. Unless it was a pot farm.

CanyonAg77 said:

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I can't adequately express how much I despise this turd.

Ruined a good airplane. Small airplanes are scarce. Endangered people on the ground. Created a hazardous waste problem for whoever owned the crash site.

I'm 99.9999999% sure this was staged. He makes money off YouTube, I have zero doubt he saw this as a great money making opportunity.

I am an inactive private pilot, and have been an airplane nut since birth. Here's what I see as suspicious.

1) Wearing a parachute. No one, and I mean no one, routinely wears a parachute while flying a small plane. The exception is anyone doing aerobatic training. As someone pointed out, these old planes are small, designed for the average male of 1940. You're going to have to at least remove the seat cushions. Unless you lose control, staying with a small plane with a dead engine is safer than parachuting, 90% of the time.

2) Cameras. Way too many cameras for a routine flight. Jumping with a selfie stick is the biggest red flag.

3) Altitude. These are little planes with small engines, maybe 50hp. It takes a long time to climb that high. No need to do so, unless you need the altitude to do something else....like parachuting.

4) "Have to jump out". No, he did not. The plane had an engine failure, but it only weighs about 900 pounds (including the pilot) and can glide long distances. I'm going to guess he was somewhere around 5,000 feet above ground level. With the engine dead, he could glide about 1.7 miles per 1000 feet elevation.

So any flat spot within 8 and a half miles radius (227 square miles) was within his glide range. The flat spot only had to be 500 feet long...less than 2 football fields. And the video plainly showed several dry river beds, directly below his plane. He might bend the plane a little, but it would be a rough landing, at worst.

Also, the stall speed of the aircraft is incredibly low...35 miles per hour. A Dalmatian dog can run faster than that. Even if he had to land in a wooded area, he could be flying incredibly slow, aim between trees to take impact on the wings, and have a very survivalable crash.

5) Door. The camera showing the cabin door clearly shows it ajar, before the engine quits. Almost as if he expected the engine to quit.

6) Controls. What in Hades is he doing yanking the yoke forward and back when the engine quit. Very weird, not needed. Was it performance art?

7) His rescuers. I didn't think I saw enough of them to call them farmers or not. But it appears to me they picked him up a long way from a farm. Unless it was a pot farm.

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So I got an answer from someone who flew that specific aircraft on the weird control m9vement and fuel issue.

He still had Gas in the header, and apparently the plane has no electric restart...engine out calls for a pitch over and windmill as the restart procedure. He's very clearly trying to keep the aircraft from accidentally restarting until he bails, if you watch it nose over it starts windmilling in the background.

He 100% intended to crash the plane.... I hope the FAA jumps all over his ass.

so this thing went viral for the wrong reasons!

1. The dude had fire extinguishers taped to his legs inside his pants!
2. He hired a helicopter to remove the plane from the crash site before he notified the FAA
3. When the plane was for sale the plane had a different engine. Now people are speculating he changed the engine out to an older "houred" out engine so not to ruin the better one the plane came with.
4. Another pilot demonstrated from that location and altitude he could have dead sticked it all the way back to a nearby airport with a paved runway. That pilot filmed himself doing exactly this. LOL

5. What a loser!

Not doubting you, but do you have a link to where you are reading this?

It's like a train wreck, I can't look away.

BQ_90 said:

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Quote:

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The dude had fire extinguishers taped to his legs inside his pants!

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I don't understand why he would do that. Or whats the point of doing that

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Liar, liar, has to be prepared when the pants catch on fire.

He has pled guilty to felony charges.

From
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/youtuber-pilot-admits-he-intentionally-crashed-plane-in-santa-barbara-county-destroyed-evidence/ar-AA1b4Ru3

Quote:

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The pilot, Trevor Jacob, agreed to plead guilty Thursday to a felony charge of "obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately destroying the wreckage of an airplane that he intentionally crashed in Santa Barbara County to gain online views," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California.

Jacob's pilot's license was also revoked by the Federal Aviation Administration, which used Jacob's Youtube video as evidence against him, in April.

...

The plea agreement states that in the weeks that followed, Jacob "lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage's location," when in fact he and a friend had towed the wreckage using a helicopter to Rancho Sisquoc, then placed it in Jacob's pickup truck and took it to a hangar at Lompoc City Airport.

Jacob admits in the agreement that he then "cut up and destroyed the airplane wreckage," then "deposited the detached parts of the wrecked airplane into trash bins at the airport and elsewhere" with the intent of obstructing the federal investigations.

He also admitted in the plea agreement that his decision to parachute out of the plane was not driven by engine failure or lack of safe landing options.

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