1) attached multiple cameras to the craft (not illegal but suspect)
2) Wearing a sports parachute (there uncomfortable as hell and he never wore any chute on any other flight)
3) opened the side door before claiming any engine failure.
4) made no attempt to restart engine
5) made no attempt to find a safe landing spot even though there were multiple landing areas in easy gliding distance
6) jumped out of the plan with a selfie stick which is not normal behaviour during a crisis .
7) Made his way to the wreck and took all the cameras
8) had the wreck disposed of before contact the authorities .
9) made no attempt to communicate on emergency frequency
None of which deals with the fact he had fire extinguishers strapped to his legs since that not technically illegal or the deliberate crashing of his plane into national reserve.
Not just disposed, but disposed in multiple locations:
> two weeks after the drama he and a friend winched the wreckage out of the forest with a helicopter, [...] 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. [...] In a plea agreement, Jacob admitted he had intended to obstruct federal authorities when he disposed of the wreckage
- Claiming always used a parachute, while having multiple prior flight videos in his channel wearing no parachute.
- Buying the airplane from the previous owner and saying then to previous owner, he "planned to do something big" with the airplane.
34°48'53.6"N 119°57'40.4"W is the exact airplane crash location: - https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B048'53.6%22N+119%C2...
The other pilot even offered to tail him but was rebuffed, with Jacob reportedly saying "if something goes wrong I'll just jump out".
this isn't normal
but on social media, it is
> […] Jacob reportedly saying "if something goes wrong I'll just jump out"
Not to defend the guy or anything but this is interesting. Maybe in his mind the plane was due for scrapping, and his plan was to fly it until failure and then jump out. Still a bad thing to do of course, and could cause fires or could kill someone, etc, but this sort of makes it conceivable how he himself may have thought that what he was doing was not so bad.
Worse, he reported the incident to the FAA, who asked him for the location and told him not to disturb the wreck (they told him more than once). He then disposed of the plane and continued telling the FAA/NTSB he didn't know where it was.
I am further going to assume that in his mind the video would get so many views that it would bring in more than the $5k investment.
That is plausible, but also illegal. It would be a violation of multiple FARs to fly a plane that you knew to be non-airworthy with the intent of having it fail.
It's very evident that he thought what he was doing (including covering up his offense) was no big deal. This is exactly why he deserves to have the book thrown at him.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/04/21/14/56879553-10739213...
