YouTuber who crashed plane for sponsorship dollars earns 6 months behind bars Of all the idiotic things people have done for views on YouTube, few are so reckless as deliberately crashing an airplane. Now, instead of sponsorship cash, Trevor Jacob has earned six months in prison for the stunt. Professional snowboarder Jacob represented the US at the 2014 Winter Olympics. He also built a presence on the …
federal prison is generally nicer than county jail.
Much like getting sent to summer camp requires you to prostrate yourself before camp counselors through ritualistic obedience exercises even though they are strangers.
The kids get through it. With a positive attitude some even enjoy it.
So can this guy.
Welcome to sleeping in, not having to prepare your own meals, a complete break from stress of responsibility, and plenty of time to read and think about the mysteries of life and organized recreational sessions
when you think about it it's not much different than living in a retirement community.
He's going to be just fine.
Although the lack of freedom can be aggravating, life outside prison isn't so free either . Situational logistics form chains as strong or stronger than physical iron. Freedom was always an abstract concept.
In a frame of existence ruled by causality and consequence there is no such thing as true freedom.
Whatever the nature of the experience of freedom, it surely is a psychological construct, and so not absolutely tied to physical circumstance to attain.
For someone used to operating as an independent contractor, I don't think employment will ever suit him anyway.
He already knows how to walk on his own.
I don't think after tasting the autonomy of being in charge of his own life he would ever go back to being a disembodied hand of an employer again.
He will just find something else he knows how to do and there's his experience to market directly and thus keep all the efforts of his work.
It needed a check ride after some maintenance, but otherwise was technically fully airworthy. One of the reasons why a check ride would have been required was that he replaced the original, antique (and thus valuable in working order) engine and replaced it with a not type rated replacement engine. For that, it would have needed to have a thorough inspection and flight check in order to be officially safe to fly and get the FAA's "stamp of approval". More of a procedural issue than actually a technical one. AFAIK, the engine of the crashed plane is still missing, so it can't be determined if there was actually anything wrong with it, as he claimed in the video. All of his behavior, and lack of any remedial measures, points rather to the engine to have been perfectly fine and him actually turning it off mid flight...
I am a licensed skydiver and pilot and I have no intention whatsoever of being such a five-star fuckstick.
This was one of the slightly odd aspects to this case. Apparently Redbull had wanted to do a similar stunt. Lots of safety planning, doing it over an unpopulated area, promising to clean up etc etc. But apparenly the FAA won't give you a license to intentionally crash a plane, even if it's for a well organised stunt. I'm guessing it's a combination of liabilty avoidance, and probably not wanting to encourage muppets like this one. Kinda curious how Hollywood does/did some of it's aerial stunts, but I guess from the amount of paperwork involved, the answer now is probably CGI.
"But apparenly the FAA won't give you a license to intentionally crash a plane, even if it's for a well organised stunt."
Discovery channel intentionally crashed a 727 back in 2012.
I suspect they would enforce a requirement that all crew must depart the aircraft whilst it is in controlled flight and ground crew remotely fly the plane into the ground.
I know the guy who filmed Tom Cruise for the Mission Impossible HALO jumps (cant recall which specific MI movie it was). This was all done "correctly" and Tom really did the jump itself. These kind of jumps take CONSIDERABLY more organising, training and specialised equipment compared to a boring old skydive at the local DZ.
I also know the guy who you may have seen on a Red Bull emblazoned wingsuit where they hop out of the plane, plane goes into a dive then he goes back in. This was not done in USA (unlike Tom's MI jumps), much like the other stunts you see where planes fly into cliffs etc. Therefore the FAA does not care and is subject to whatever the local jurisdiction is.
Last name drop I promise - there was a Chevy ad where they toss some car out the back of a Skyvan and these skydivers are flying around it, this was filmed in a remote part of Arizona. Most definitely FAA jurisdiction. I know this lot too but I'm unsure as to what approvals they required. One would assume they obtained them as the ad went on to US national TV.
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It was able to fly, so the engine instruments were good at least. But maybe he sold them after he helicoptered out the wreckage.
Apparently he swapped the engine out and removed a bunch of other parts, so it was pretty stripped down. Was interesting watching the aviation community going through the video and picking out all the evidence for it being staged. One of the reasons he's in jail though is for recovering the wreckage and then trying to hide it so the 'accident' couldn't be investigated.
It is interesting how many news reports have scrubbed out the name of the wallet manufacturer who sponsored Jacobs for this stunt. It is like they are somehow being protected from bad press.
Ridge wallet from ridge.com sponsored Trevor Jacobs to crash this plane. Remember that company's ethics when doing your shopping this holiday season.
The wallet manufacturer was not aware of his plans and as soon as they realised what he had done they asked to be removed from the video and disassociated themselves from him. About 3 days after posting the original video he republished it with all references. to the sponsor removed. This was while there was a lot of suspicion and discussion in the aviation community regarding what he had done, but not yet a detailed criminal investigation or mainstream interest. The speed the sponsor moved to remove themselves suggests they didn't wait until the publicity turned negative to get removed, they must have requested it pretty much as soon as they saw the video.
Riiight. Here is some money. Pimp our product in a video. Naw, we don't need to know what the video is. Just cash our check.
Companies don't toss around marketing money without some idea how their brand will be represented. I'll bet it 'seemed like a good idea at the time'.
The plane he crashed was old but in perfect flying conditions. Nothing even remotely "dilapidated". And yes, there were more hints from the start of his video that this was all but a scam stunt. Including flying high enough to safely glide and maneuver to any of at least 3 or 4 emergency landing sites (grass strips, roads, sand bank of a creek)
He got off far too easy, he even got his pilot license already back and those 6 months are a total joke.
He should spend at least two years in the klink and lose his pilot license for life...
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