Scudrunners Aviation News – Last December Youtuber Trevor Jacob uploaded a video of him bailing out his 1946 Taylorcraft N29508. The video shows him cursing and panicking before bailing out. The 13-minute video titled “I Crashed My Plane,” has gained more than 1.9 million views.
Trevor Jacob said in a statement that he had flown that day to spread the ashes of his best friend Johnny Strange over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Johnny Strange died in 2015 while BASE jumping.
The aviation community immediately speculated that this was some sort of stunt for obvious reasons. The first red flag pilots noticed was a random fuel selector dangling in the cockpit. In the video you can see he opened the door prior to the engine “failing”. In previous videos he uploaded to YouTube he is never seen wearing a parachute while flying, however in this video his parachute is already strapped on. Normally in small aircraft like the Taylorcraft he was flying Pilots don’t fly with a parachute on them for a variety of reasons. When the engine does stop he can be seen pumping the yoke and he makes no attempt to restart the engine, look for a suitable emergency landing spot or even transmit a mayday call.
As Trevor Jacobs bails out he has a selfie stick in hand, and captures many great shots of the plane crashing as well as a few suitable emergency landing options. It should be noted that he free falls for quite some time before deploying his parachute.
In this picture you can see a perfect emergency landing site in the creek bed, heck I would land there with a perfectly good airplane. Remember kids when you bail out of a plane to bring your selfie stick and pose for amazing pictures like this.
When the plane crashes for some reason Trevor Jacobs decides to land near the airplane in bushes despite perfectly reasonable locations near a creek bed. Suffice to say as a skilled sky diver he would have been very capable of steering himself to safety. Many thought that Trevor Jacob’s motivation for steering his parachute towards the wreck was to recover the many cameras he had outfitted his classic aircraft with.
The FAA agreed with many of these observations and began to investigate the “accident”.
On April 11,2022 the FAA sent a letter to Jacobs and from news reports from an “insider” the following quotes have emerged.
In its letter to Jacob, the FAA added: “During this flight, you opened the left side pilot door before you claimed the engine had failed.”
Jacob also made no attempt to contact air traffic control on the emergency frequency, did not attempt restarting the engine, and did not look for a place to land, “even though there were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing,” the agency said.
Following the crash, he “recovered and then disposed of the wreckage,” the FAA continued.
“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. 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.”
On Wednesday, Jacob did not appear to be aware of the FAA’s ruling, telling the New York Times in an email: “Where’d you get that information?”
