A 29-year-old former Olympic snowboarder jumped out of his single-propeller plane on a flight from Lompoc to Mammoth Lakes, claiming he parachuted out of the aircraft because of engine trouble.
A YouTuber pilot who bailed out midair and deliberately sent his plane crashing into the ground to bolster viewing numbers on his channel could be jailed for up to 20 years, US authorities said Thursday.
In a video seen by nearly three million people and entitled “I crashed my airplane,” Trevor Jacob appears to experience engine trouble while flying over southern California in November 2021.
The dramatic footage shows Jacob, 29, ejecting from the single engine plane — selfie-stick in hand — and parachuting into the dense vegetation of the Los Padres National Forest.
Cameras placed all over the aircraft show its out-of-control descent into the forest, and its eventual crash landing.
In the weeks after the incident, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched a probe into the crash, and Jacob was ordered to preserve the wreckage.
The YouTuber told officials he did not know where the plane had gone down, but, according to a plea deal lodged in Los Angeles, two weeks after the drama he and a friend winched the wreckage out of the forest with a helicopter, having earlier recovered data from the onboard cameras.
Over the next few days, he cut up the plane into small pieces, and dumped the parts in trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport.
According to the FAA, the plane crash was intentional, and there was plenty of evidence to prove it: Jacobs installed cameras on the plane prior to flight, including one pointed at the propeller; he flew with a parachute on; he opened the pilot door before claiming the engine had failed; he did not attempt to restart the engine, contact air traffic control or find a safe place to land.
Two days after the doomed flight, on Nov. 26, 2021, the National Transportation Safety Board began its investigation, according to the Justice Department. The FAA followed suit three days later.
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.