A California pilot could face jail time after deliberately crashing his airplane to gain more views for his YouTube channel, federal authorities said Thursday.
Trevor Jacob, a 29-year-old professional snowboarder-turned-pilot, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Central California.
Viral Video Fuels Skepticism
The 13-minute video first shows a smooth flight over a mountain range, with Jacob smiling and giving thumbs up to many cameras mounted on his plane. It then shows the plane’s propeller losing power and stops rotating. The pilot unleashes a slew of expletives, saying he has “an engine out,” before jumping out with a selfie stick to film his landing.The former snowboarder successfully lands in some brush with few scrapes. He tells his audience that the plane had an “engine failure,” and that he had no choice but to jump out mid-flight because there was “no safe place to land.”
The rest of the video shows Jacob hiking to the crash site to retrieve video recordings of the event. He then wanders in the wilderness until he runs into a farmer and asks for help.
The video has drawn much skepticism, including from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In April 2022, after an investigation into the crash, the federal agency revoked his private pilot certificate, saying that he violated federal aviation regulations by purposely abandoning his aircraft in a “reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.”
The Plea
In a plea agreement, Jacob admitted that he staged the crash to make money from the video.According to California prosecutors, Jacob had secured sponsorship from “a company that sold various products, including a wallet.” As part of the sponsorship deal, Jacob agreed to promote the company’s wallet in a YouTube video that he would post.
On Nov. 26, 2021, Jacob notified the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) about the crash, alleging that he didn’t know where the wreckage was, the plea agreement states. In the weeks following the crash, Jacob kept lying to NTSB and FAA investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location.
“In fact, on December 10, 2021, Jacob and a friend flew by helicopter to the wreckage site,” the prosecutor said, citing the plea agreement. “There, Jacob used straps to secure the wreckage, which the helicopter lifted and carried to Rancho Sisquoc in Santa Barbara County, where it was loaded onto a trailer attached to Jacob’s pickup truck.”
Jacob then cut up and destroyed the airplane wreckage further and deposited pieces of it in trash bins at the Lompoc City Airport and elsewhere, according to the plea agreement. He admitted to authorities in the plea that this was done with the intent to obstruct federal investigations.
The YouTube personality also lied to federal investigators in a post-incident report, saying that the plane’s engine “experienced a full loss of power approximately 35 minutes after takeoff,” the agreement states. The claim that he could not identify any safe landing options was also a lie.
Jacob is expected to make a court appearance in the coming weeks, the prosecutors said.
