Influencer crashes plane for world-first selfie

It’s old news that people will go to ridiculous lengths to get a selfie, but deliberately crashing a plane takes things to a whole other level! And certainly to new height of crazy.

America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has determined that an influencer by the name of Trevor Jacob, known for his daredevil antics, deliberately abandoned his plane, allowing it to crash into the Los Padres National Forest in Southern California.

Jacob posted a video of the incident on YouTube back in December which has since attracted over 2 million views. The video, I Crashed My Plane, shows the aircraft, a 1940 Taylorcraft plane, with several cameras attached. One minute into the video, the engine appears to stall, followed by a string of expletive from Jacob before he leaps out of the plane with a parachute. And a selfie stick!

Shortly after the video was posted in late December, aviation experts and viewers expressed doubts over the events portrayed. As reported in The New York Times, in their investigation the FAA stated: “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.” They found that Jacob made no attempt to contact air traffic control on the emergency frequency before jumping out of the plane, nor did he try to restart the engine by increasing airflow over the propeller, or try and find a safe place to land, “even though there were multiple areas within gliding range in which you could have made a safe landing.”

Jacob also located and disposed of the wreckage. The FAA has revoked his private pilot certificate, thereby removing permission for him to operate any aircraft.

 

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