YouTube has become a site with a video to indulge every interest, from silly videos or pets to adrenaline junky stunt videos. YouTuber and pilot Trevor Jacob came under fire last year when he parachuted out of his aircraft before it crashed, which was later found to be a fabricated incident, likely for views. Jacob has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge for obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately destroying the plane wreckage, which he intentionally crashed.
He agreed to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. When Jacob took off on November 24, 2021 from the Lompoc Airport in his TaylorCraft BL-65, he documented the engine failure in his plane and subsequent emergency parachute landing. In the video, he claimed he was headed to Mammoth Mountain to spread the ashes of a late friend, whom he says died while BASE jumping.
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What we see in the Trevor Jacob plane crash YouTube video with the FAA investigating
He admitted in his plea agreement that he planned to eject from the aircraft during the flight so he could video himself parachuting to the ground, watching as the plane descended and crashed into the side of the mountain. In his YouTube video, he claimed to post it to let other pilots learn from his experience. Since then, it has been edited and about four minutes have been cut from the video, including the intro, text screens, a paid advertisement and the ending of the video.
Several cameras had been mounted to the aircraft before takeoff and Jacob was equipped with a parachute, video camera and selfie stick. The plea agreement states he used the video camera mounted on the selfie stick to video the plane crashing, then after landing he hiked to the wreckage to recover data with the video recording of the flight and crash.
Jacob informed the NTSB about the crash two days after the fact. The NTSB launched an investigation and told him he was responsible for preserving the wreckage for examination, to which he agreed. Three days after the NTSB launched its investigation, the FAA launched its own. In the weeks following, Jacob lied to investigators, claiming he did not know where the wreckage was located, according to the plea agreement.
On Dec. 10, 2022 Jacob and a friend flew a helicopter out to the site where he secured the wreckage and had it lifted and carried off so it could be loaded onto a trailer attached to his truck. He then unloaded it into a hangar at the Lompoc City Airport where he then cut up and destroyed the wreckage. Over the span of a few days, he dumped the cut pieces into trash bins at the airport and elsewhere. He admitted in his plea agreement that he did this with the intent to obstruct the federal authorities from investigating the crash.
He uploaded a video titled “I Crashed My Airplane” to his YouTube channel on Dec. 23, 2021 that included the staged crash and a promotion for a wallet. He admitted he uploaded this to make money through the promotion on the video.
Jacob admitted he lied to federal investigators when he submitted an aircraft accident incident report, in which he falsely indicated that the aircraft had experienced a complete loss of power 35 minutes after takeoff. He also admitted to lying to an FAA aviation safety inspector when he told them the plane’s engine had quit and because he could not identify a safe landing option, he parachuted out of the plane.
The FAA revoked his pilot license in April 2022, saying he had intentionally abandoned his plane when he parachuted to the ground as the airplane crashed. The FAA told Jacob to surrender his private license immediately or face a civil penalty of $1,644 for each day he did not return the license. In the FAA’s letter to Jacob, it stated that his flight was careless or reckless and endangered the life or property of another. The FAA also stated that Jacob left the pilot side door before he claimed engine failure, without attempting to contact ATC on the emergency frequency, trying to restart the engine and failing to find a safe place to land with multiple clear areas within gliding range. The FAA was also aware he had recovered the cameras and disposed of the wreckage before it had been confirmed publicly.
The FAA takes stunts like these seriously, taking the license of Red Bull pilots when they attempted a mid-air plane swap without FAA approval. While achieving internet fame is desired by many, attempting to go viral while risking your own life might not be the best route to internet infamy.
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Jacob is a former Olympic snowboarder who took to performing stunts on the internet, obtaining his pilot license in mid-June 2020 and taking his stunts to the sky. He was posting consistently on his channel before the incident, showing skydiving, snowboarding, scuba diving and skateboarding. He had amassed 129,000 subscribers at the time, but currently, that number has jumped to 137,000. He has not uploaded a video for over a year, posting just an MMA fighting video after the infamous staged crash video.
According to his plea agreement, Jacob is an experienced pilot and skydiver and had secured sponsorship from a company that sold the wallet he promoted in the crash video. The charges were filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and he is expected to make his initial court appearance in the coming weeks.
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