Former US Olympic Team snowboarder turned YouTuber Trevor Jacob had his pilot certificate revoked after he was found to have intentionally caused his single-engine airplane to crash. — Screenshot from YouTube/ I Crashed My Plane
KUALA LUMPUR, April 22 — A former US Olympic Team snowboarder turned YouTuber had his pilot certificate revoked after he was found to have intentionally caused his single-engine airplane to crash.
Trevor Jacob had documented the incident and uploaded it onto his YouTube channel “I Crashed My Plane” on December 24 last year, People reported.
According to the portal, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) withdrew Jacob’s pilot certificate early this month after the video appeared to show his 1940 Taylorcraft plane suffering from an engine malfunction while flying over California’s Los Padres National Forest in November.
Jacob, who set up multiple cameras for the flight, jumped out of the plane using a parachute as the aircraft crashed a short time later.
Shortly after the video was posted, other YouTubers — such as Mentour Now!, Trent Palmer, and MojoGrip — began questioning Jacob’s decision-making and whether he passed up many opportunities to land the aircraft instead of letting it crash.
In their letter to Jacob, the FAA determined that Jacob staged the engine malfunction for the video and decided to revoke his pilot certificate.
“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 portal reported quoting the agency’s letter to Jacob.
“Your egregious and intentional actions on these dates indicate that you presently lack the degree of care, judgment and responsibility required of a certificate holder,” added the agency.
The FAA pointed out that Jacob, who competed in snowboarding at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, did not appear to contact air traffic control, did not try to restart the engine, nor look for a place to land, though “there were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing.”
The agency also took issue with Jacob continuing to film himself with a selfie stick after leaping from a plane.
“When you jumped out of N29508 you began recording the plane in the camera attached to the selfie-stick you were holding while you were descending to the ground,” the FAA said.
“In addition, after the crash, you recovered and then disposed of the wreckage of N29508 and recovered the cameras you attached to N29508 as well,” they added.
“Your actions as described above were careless and reckless so it has to endanger the life and property of another.”
The video had since been viewed more than 1.88 million times and had received 20,000 reactions.
The comment section, however, has been closed.