It's really transparent to anyone who's flown. He spends no time debugging, no time communicating, no time looking for somewhere to land. He had a lot of altitude and his immediate thought was "Oh ok I guess it's broken, seeeeyaaaaa".
Amongst all the other callouts, like why a parachute, why so many cameras strapped up, some timeline incongruities, some camera shot incongruities. His flight path made no sense. It was well executed enough to trick your regular view I'm sure, but it did not stand up to scrutiny, and you better believe the FAA was going to scrutinize.
It was really obvious to me as someone who hasn't flown, even. As a layman it was obvious there would be at least a checklist of things you'd try first.
Like to get the engine running again, figure out if there's anywhere close enough to land/ditch safely, radio ATC, etcetera. And he didn't appear surprised or stressed out, he looked like he was expecting it.
Plus having the parachute on in advance, and so many cameras?
But this guy? This guy just pressed triangle and immediately pulled a full on GTA-V move.
Also pretty obvious that this guy is no outdoorsman. He complains about not being able to get signal so he can call 911, but then he walks down a ravine and then down a dry river bed. In that situation, you need to climb UP, not down, and get as much elevation and clearance as possible.
Fun factoid: one of the cornerstone references for search-and-rescue planning is a reference work called "Lost Person Behavior"[1] ... it has empirical data on how people tend to behave in various situations based on categorization of their circumstances.
For example, despondent people have historically tended to behave differently from those suffering dementia or lost hikers or plane crash survivors.
The text includes statistical data on where lost people have been found relative to the initial planning point for a search (e.g. last known point) - how far away, what type of terrain, whether they tend to go uphill or downhill etc.
One of the largest step-changes in lost person behavior came with the general adoption of the cellphone: many, many people now tend to go uphill than before - specifically in the hope of finding cellphone coverage.
>One of the largest step-changes in lost person behavior came with the general adoption of the cellphone: many, many people now tend to go uphill than before - specifically in the hope of finding cellphone coverage.
Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
Historically, it was pretty situational if you should stay put and make yourself safe and visible to rescuers or if you should try to self-rescue. But my sense is today the general impulse is to call for rescue--with the caveat that many of the places people are most likely to get in trouble are the least likely to have cell phone reception.
If you get high enough, in many places you’ll eventually hit line of sight to at least some cell tower. I’ve gone deep into wilderness areas and it isn’t uncommon to get cell coverage somewhere on a ridge line or mountain peak. Often strong enough that you can hit Facebook, upload pictures, download offline maps, or even videos.
Can confirm. In general, Death Valley has no signal. However, when my wife and I biked from saline valley to racetrack valley up the Lippincott road, we kept finding little spots of reasonably strong cell signal - enough that we were able to wait here: 8584JCR4+6C and get enough signal to download a new audiobook.
Our whole time left in DV, we never found any other reliably strong signal.
As of a few years ago Furnace Creek had cell service (it didn't used to) but Death Valley as a whole doesn't have much coverage. You were presumably seeing a tower somewhere in the mountains west of Death Valley.
Headed downhill into a ravine might make sense if you're looking for water (water flows down, after all).
I'm mildly amused that we have trained ourselves into anti-survival behaviors- head uphill where there is less water, more exposure to elements, etc. (of course, being uphill might make you more visible, but that's assuming anyone is coming anytime immediately soon)
I've seen a lot of near-accident videos and they all show the initiation of the accident sequence and allow you to step through the process the PIC went through to either _cause_ and/or _get out of_ the incident. This video had none of those qualities. Trim for best glide speed? Nope. Head on a swivel looking for suitable alternates? Nope. The performative display of pumping the yoke? Engine is out and the pilot is trying to do what? Precipitate an aerodynamic stall?
I can think of very few disciplines that are more contradictory than the juxtaposition of aviation with the "influencer"/social media spectrum. Hopefully the FAA revocation of his certificate paves the way for law enforcement to look into fraud and other issues.
Exactly! I wonder why he didn't at least act like he ran out of options before bailing out. "OK, there's an airport over there." <banks slightly> "Oh crap, I'm losing too much altitude! I'll never make it! Time to bail out! Buy a Ridge Wallet!"
> He spends no time debugging, no time communicating, no time looking for somewhere to land.
Yup. He spent most of his time doing absolutely nothing, just maintaining back-pressure on the yoke and holding the aircraft in the stall.
I suppose at least he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics. Somehow he does not strike me as the sort of person who could manage to recover from a wing-drop and induced spin.
Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform
> Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform
I was nodding until this bit... why do you think YouTube should censor this? It's a real video of a real thing that he did (which he misrepresents the circumstances of). I could possibly get on board with "put an explanatory note next to it" or "don't let him get ad revenue from it", but what possible reason would there be for deleting it?
It is annoying to see idiots get a lot of attention, but really, it is not a glorification of a stupid act, it is just a video of one. Furthermore, it would live on in all of those videos that point out just how stupid it was, unless Youtube also removes those - but they are informative, I would say.
I'm generally in favor of idiots that do illegal things then posting video evidence of them online. I don't think it glorifies the act if YouTube then demonetized the video with a note & link back to the FAA's ruling. Showing stupid things & their consequences seems reasonable.
Would you feel the same if this became the top watched video for weeks, with a lively comment section mostly leaning towards "omg that is so cool! I want to top this!!!"?
I wouldn't - which is why I don't mind if it's taken down.
I'm hesitant to advocate taking something down. I'm not saying it should never happen, but this doesn't cross the threshold for me. In this instance the video creator wasn't encouraging people to do this and the audience response wasn't to jump in and do the same thing. Also videos that would fit this category-- filmed evidence of illegal activity & subsequent consequences (which I think Google should add to the video)-- are not likely to become popular in the thought experiment you describe. If they did, maybe I'd revisit my opinion.
On the other hand, if content is encouraging people to do harmful or dangerous things then that becomes a different issue. I'm less uncomfortable with YouTube trying to stop Tide Pod Challenge videos which were basically encouraging such activity: The first two weeks of 2018 saw about as many poisoning reports from this as most entire years before then. [1]
What glorification? This is a thing that happened, and it's incredibly newsworthy. Prevent him from profiting off the video and leave it up. There is no reason to do anything further from YouTube's perspective.
How is "treat this video like any other video" (i.e. do nothing) a "glorification"? There are tons of videos of incredibly stupid and dangerous acts on YouTube.
But why would YouTube want to do that? What he did is obviously wrong, dangerous, and stupid, but still I see no reason from YouTube's side to remove the video.
Perhaps they would remove it if they are concerned their platform could be incentivizing wrong, dangerous or stupid behavior and they worry about the brand damage that does or have ethical problems profiting off that.
This is what I was thinking. I didn't find the video here on HN. A few weeks ago my 11 year old son told me about it. Like a lot of kids his age, becoming a YouTuber is aspirational, and his reaction was "that is crazy" but it was also "this guy just raised the ante on Mr. Beast." It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.
"Wrong" = criminal (?) maybe. Though this guy hasn't actually been prosecuted and may well never be.
But if you're going to ban dangerous/stupid video someone has to make that determination. And you can be sure that there are a ton of activities that are dangerous/stupid in the eyes of some people (even understandably so). BASE jumping, wingsuits, really any kind of extreme sports, stuff with explosives, etc.
> It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.
People were doing stupid stuff before YouTube existed. As long as it's legal (which this stunt was not) who cares? Teach your son why he shouldn't do that kind of stuff instead of turning to censorship.
Nowhere did I advocate censorship. But I do think it should be illegal because this stunt could have started a wildfire if the plane had started burning.
> he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics
Evidence suggests he may have bought the plane explicitly for this stunt. He's an experienced sky diver, so I imagine he knows what kind of plane is good for a pilot looking to bail.
> he had a fire extinguisher concealed under his pants right above his ankle.
This was also something I just learned about the incident an hour ago, and in fact he has a fire extinguisher on both legs, which are relatively evident in his video:
I think he probably has them for just that reason - to put out any fire his crash might start. He knew there is massive, massive liability and jail time for deliberately doing something that causes a fire and can potentially destroy miles of trees, homes, and people.
Alternatively, he could have been thinking about his next hit YouTube video already, titled "See, this is why I always jump with two fire extinguishers on me!".
It's unlikely that you'd land near your crashed plane if you jumped out of it while it still had enough altitude for your parachute to work. By the time you got to your plane, if a fire were going to get big, it already would have.
One of the things I was most impressed by was how he managed to aim for some camera worthy bushes to land in when there were SO many better options for safety.
I wasted an inordinate amount of time analysing the whole thing myself, including but not limited to finding the location based on geographic features - and then testing in Flight Simulator.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.
I'm disappointed he's not thrown in jail for reckless endangerment.
There was for a time a micro-industry of people taking flights to this location on Youtube -- it's one of the most fun examples of this that I've seen.
And yeah; really quickly people discovered that he genuinely had options.
There is a question I've not seen answered yet. Did the wallet guys know he was doing this in advance?
Unlikely. What most YouTubers call "sponsors" they have instead signed up to be an affiliate for using an online form. He likely broke the conditions for which the affiliate link/code could be used, which could have been the reason he removed that section from the video.
He also removed the ending, and both the beginning and ending were the pretext for the flight – bringing his friends ashes in a used sandwich bag to be scattered in the mountains, so could have instead been removed to reduce the cheese factor.
I’ve seen speculation that he shot those “plane spiraling below me” money shots separately. Sadly I don’t have the time to find the YouTuber’s videos who made the claim.
…suffice to say lots of people have gone through his video frame by frame to find weird stuff.
Well, sure, that's where the lack of critical thinking skills comes in.
Though, de'd still probably get there before it spread to miles and miles...he just wouldn't have had much impact when he did even if it was only a few dozen yards in size.
The first thing he did after landing was head to the crash site. Not saying he could have actually stopped a forest blaze with fire extinguishers (it's not like wildland firefighters use them) but that might have been what he had planned.
It appears that he actually made a ton of effort to prevent a fire from erupting from the crashed plane, which is really, ironically, the smoking gun that this was a planned crash.
For instance, the apparent reason why the engine stopped working isn't due to mechanical failure of the engine (very common in old ass prop planes, just as your Hyundai might blow up, due to oil starvation, spun bearings, rods grenading itself, etc), but rather running out of fuel. He purposefully brought not enough fuel to kill the engine, and secondarily prevent a fire. It was also strongly speculated that he filled one of the fuel tanks with water, probably in an attempt to prevent a fire from erupting.
> ...isn't due to mechanical failure of the engine (very common in old ass prop planes, just as your Hyundai might blow up, due to oil starvation, spun bearings, rods grenading itself, etc)
Unlike cars, even old aviation engines have strict rules for inspection, and for replacement of parts after a certain number of hours, rather than when they wear out or fail. You could get away with circumventing these for a while, but it is simply not true that it is "very common" for "old ass prop planes" to have engine failures, comparably to old cars.
> It was also strongly speculated that he filled one of the fuel tanks with water...
I would be interested in seeing how strong the evidence behind this speculation is, but if it were the case, it would be yet further evidence of his incompetence, as water is no help, and sometimes a problem, in preventing, containing and extinguishing a gasoline fire.
A tank full of gas won't explode if punctured, but there might be a fire if it leaks near something hot enough. An empty tank will explode with just the slightest spark. A half tank just depends on where it gets punctured, but with gravity and all, it's likely to be the bottom half that gets punctured.
Cars use in-tank pumps turned by brushed electric motors. Why don't they blow up when empty?
Even in an empty fuel tank the vapors are way to rich to ignite. You might get a good flash if you introduce air and ignition at the same time but odds are you won't get any sort of sustained fire.
And are placed somewhere completely else on Swedish keyboards but it was an Aha-moment when I realized as a child that the keys ,. was really supposed to be <> for arrows in some games 30+ years ago :-)
I remember the first time I absentmindedly pressed . or , on YouTube and was shocked that they used MPlayer's keybindings (and implemented such an obscure, but useful, feature). Oddly probably the least copied feature across video platforms, I like it a lot, but nobody else seems to have stolen it. (Can anyone believe that Twitch has gotten away with such a terrible player? I remember people used to send streamers Twitch VODs to review, and every time they paused the video gets greyed out. Twitch never changed this, and now people use YouTube for that.)
The joke is more that "you have amazing eyes" more means "you have beautiful eyes", at least in British English. "you have excellent eyes" would be how I'd comment on someone's eyesight.
Hah, I must admit that I didn't catch it the previous times I watched the video when I heard about the incident; It wasn't until I learned he had extinguishers strapped to the back of his legs that I went hunting for them in the video.
Even knowing what I was looking for I had to do frame-by-frame a couple of times before spotting them, and once you see them it's obvious but to spot them not knowing they are there is quite a feat.
If you search YouTube for “Trevor Jacob” there is several pilot folks who have spent tons of time going through every little detail of the video. They’ve reconstructed the flight path, where it landed, you name it. It was one of those “hive mind” kind of deals and it was fun to follow during the month or so after the original video was posted.
Does ublock somehow stops view counts? Or are you strictly talking about monetization? Even though I don't care about adding views, that might make youtube recommend his videos further. He's probably on some kind of shadowban at this point, though.
For anyone else like me who was curious as to the utility of having a fire extinguisher on one's person when deliberately crashing the plane, the speculation is that
1. It would be useful to fight fire at the wreckage if attempting a recovery of the go-pro footage from the plane
2. To limit a bush fire from spreading (and national park blowback) around the wreckage, although those tiny extinguishers would probably do diddly-squat if a bush fire actually started
Which, by the way, is another incongruity. The dude had a highly maneuverable parachute and yet somehow lands in a bunch of prickly bushes. He had ample time to find a much better landing site that would ensure a speedy recovery.
I do but this account has come to my attention a couple of times by now and I'm considering pinging a higher power.
"Better to use the extinguishers as extra thrust for a wing suit." does not read like something a reasonable person would inject as a contribution to the conversation.
...Legally speaking, that would not be the case, as you're giving the prosecution ammo for proving premeditation.
Someone who actually just had something happen to them probably would not be carrying two fire extinguishers that they suddenly had an epiphany and realized they could use as a thrust source.
Our legal system is absolutely perfect for ensuring that "cool" will almost always get couched as "reckless and wanton disregard". This does however, push the calculus in favor of, "if you're going to do it, get the most out of it".
I too would assume that a plane would typically crash (significantly) further away than the distance that you can typically travel in a parachute, unless it was put in a straight nosedive.
Which is something one can't guarantee from outside the plane.
Also, it's much easier to ensure a safe crash site when you're only doing the calculations in one axis, which a nose down, straight in trajectory would have offered.
I'm surprised the youtube video is still up, and has 1.7 million or more views. With that many views he's probably earned up to 5 figures of revenue from the ads and such alone. IMHO he kind of has gotten away with it--he's making money and added a ton of subscribers. Youtube should really kick him off the platform.
This guy crashed a plane for profit. The fact that US law doesn't seem to have any meaningful sanction for him is not a reason for it to stay up.
They should delete the video. And I really don't understand the argument that they shouldn't stop him using their platform; my goodness if Youtube was mine he'd be gone and I wouldn't for a second wonder if there was any meaningful free speech implication for removing it.
He is dangerous, and the allure of more views on youtube made him do a dangerous thing. I'd be like: "OK, you're not my customer anymore".
So did the Discovery channel. The only difference is that they had asked the FAA permission to do so.
This guy crashed a plane for profit without permission. This may have just been stupidity, not understanding the consequences. Loads of people also crash other vehicles for fun and profit, so why should YT distinguish between someone crashing a car vs a plane. Where should YT draw the line? They don't make the laws.
The discovery channel didn’t try to pretend it was an engine fire. They set out to plan a plane crash with the full involvement of relevant authorities.
Yes, but now the FAA has stated what we all knew already — it was dangerous stunt undertaken entirely for self-promotion. YouTube don’t have to be experts?
It may be a huge difference, but the problem with asking Youtube to take that kind of decision without a court order is that you're expecting them to have expertise in aviation law. What next? Should they remove house flipping videos because of realtor regulations in various jurisdictions? Remove DIY videos because some jurisdictions require electrical repairs to be performed by certified technicians? The list is endless, and the precedent is so very bad.
> It may be a huge difference, but the problem with asking Youtube to take that kind of decision without a court order is that you're expecting them to have expertise in aviation law.
This is a bit of a silly way to look at it, I'm sorry to say.
What if they just remove the video on the balance of probability that it involved, in the FAA's judgement, a deliberate dangerous plane crash without permission?
This is not a challenging precedent. House-flipping is not smashing a plane into the ground without planning and without regard for safety, is it?
What about infringement on the regulation on the handling of unsafe chemicals?
Regulations on performing archælogical excavations?
Food safety violations?
Alcohol production?
Blasphemy laws in any country Youtube might be accessed from?
Animal cruelty laws? (Are hamster wheels cruel?)
Religious laws on the consumption of cattle / pork?
Privacy laws in Germany? (Dashcams are heavily regulated there)
Is it legal to show a Nazi swastika everywhere? A non Nazi swastika? A communist symbol? What about an imperial Japanese ensign?
Is it legal to say the Armenian suffered a genocide, or to claim they didn't?
Is it legal to cast doubt on any one finding of the Nuremberg trials?
What about mentioning a crime committed by a living person more than 20 years go? (Hint: it may not be legal in some European countries. Which ones? You tell me.)
Do you think youtube should systematically go through all videos for perceived dangerous people or people who look like views might "make" them do dangerous things, or just the ones that are brought to their attention by angry mobs / report volume?
And would "dangerous" include technically legal but dangerous actions like speaking up for gay rights in Yemen or criticizing cartels in Mexico? Or would they be more limited to the youtube wrong-think-corrections officer judging the video to demonstrate outright illegal actions like protesting Putin's special operation while in Russia, or publishing documents containing evidence of western war crimes?
I would normally agree with you but I feel like there’s a moral issue with what is essentially monetizing criminal activity. At a minimum, it should be demonetized and YouTube shouldn’t show any ads either.
I guess "criminal activity" may have been the wrong phrase. "Illegal activity" is more what I meant. Because not all illegal activity is adjudicated by a court, and a regulatory action by the FAA is one of those things.
Many jurisdictions have ways to seize profits of crime, and just about all have ways to punish crime including paying fines and restitution.
Don't you think it would be better to go through a system which has (at least a semblance of) due process, fairness, and transparency about the rules? Yes yes I know I know, "they're a private company they can do what they want". I'm not wondering what they can do, more flabbergasted about the apparent sudden and large support for corporations acting to censor and punish people like this.
> This is a dangerous thought. There is already too much decision making of what is allowed on our social platform by the big corps
In this case though the FAA has made the decision, he didn't do something in bad taste - he did something that could have been very dangerous to others, could have started a major fire, and was illegal (or at least broke the FAA rules enough for him to loose his license). And the reason he did that was (almost certainly) to make a YouTube video - I think YouTube would be justified from kicking him off their platform for this.
No, but in this case it's probably certain that if he wasn't going to make a YouTube video he wouldn't have done the illegal act. It's probably something that most companies and advertisers, wouldn't want to be associated with incase they were seen to be endorsing and encouraging the act.
> YouTube should at best demonetize the video, and only if it does that consistently based on a public policy.
Exactly.
I'm generally in favour of youtube removing objectionable material, or at least corralling it somewhere as they already do with their half-assed "mature content" filter, but it absolutely must be done on a policy basis which is written down upfront and made clear to uploaders, and subject to fair reviews. Doing it on outrage based case by case basis is just enraging to all involved.
And it's not the actual content of this video which is objectionable, but the circumstances under which it was made. Possibly it contravenes UK rules on profiting from crime if it's monetized: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02...
- but (a) it's not in our jurisdiction and (b) he hasn't actually been convicted yet.
demonitization seems the best option I guess. Leave it up as a display of stupidity, and aviation history. But don't let him profit of something illegal
People write books about their past illegal exploits. Are you against people documenting their lives for profit, in-general? I don’t see the difference here except that it’s a video instead of a book.
I think the tricky part with this particular video is that the documentation (plane crash video) was the entire point of committing the act. If people were committing crimes entirely to sell tell all books or documentaries about doing it that would be a lot more sketchy.
> Youtube should really kick him off the platform.
No, a responsible behaviour is for Youtobe to purposely leave him on the platform for everybody to see what he did and the comments below the video, but cut his revenue for this video due to ToS violations. I sure the lawyers who wrote the ToS thought about something like this.
So if you are behaving obnoxiously in a private coffe shop the owners can’t ask you to leave?
Everyone is free to choose who they do business with. There are some protected categories but “people wantonly destroying airplanes for publicity and profit” is not one of them.
It can end with whatever criteria you want. I think clearly a viral video with this behavior fits the definition of something that should be taken down. It’s a guy deliberately crashing a plane for views. It’s the same thing as not publishing a mass shooter’s name. I’m sure they’re written in books somewhere, but not everything is a slippery slope to PRC censorship. It’s the process of finding the blurry line.
There have been a number of best sellers about people breaking the law in real life. No one was harmed in this case or the other case. I can't imagine someone wanting to censor this, just seems quite a bit extreme.
Businesses that hold a massive and unfair effective monopoly on communication and information are different from unremarkable coffee shops. And, furthermore, this is not an action that the business is going to take out of their own freewill, it's an action that you want to force on them by some mechanism of public rage, so it's not actually YouTube choosing who they do business with, it's YOU choosing for YouTube who they do business with, but masking it as YouTube's own decisions.
I don't get the obsession with removing dumb online stunts. I can understand calls for censoring violent crimes and even then you don't get to make this decision for other people, censoring unpleasant things doesn't make them go away.
But with dumb online posts the case just completely falls apart. "But he's going to benefit from this" ok so fucking what ? there's a whole class of people who do dumb, dangerous and harmful things for public approval and profit from it, they are called polliticans and celebrities. They routinely do unimaginabley stupid and outrageous things and profit from the publicity that comes with it. How is this any different, except that "online influencer" is a relatively new class of people unlike the other ones?
>There are some protected categories
Appealing to protected groups is the weakest argument you could ever make for "Businesses can censor whoever they like". Protected groups are arbitary and reflects lobbying and political considerations more than any moral truth. Why are some religious groups protected for instance? it's just a bunch of beliefs, they could be as wrong or as dumb as any other set of beliefs right ? they are not immutable characteristics of the people believing them. (not anymore than any other kind of beliefs)
My own personal opinion is that it's stupid to classify people as "Protected" or not, but rather any business that have reasonably-easy-to-find alternatives can do whatever the hell they like, refuse to serve customers based on skin color, gender, favorite programming language, you name it. As long as it's "easy" to find alternatives (by some objective standard the law defines, like "there's is a similar service within a 1-KM radius"), they can do whatever they like.
But for all other businesses who aren't so easy to replace, common sense morality says they should be EXTREMELY curtailed from censoring or denying *anyone* without a very good reason.
Alas, we don't live in my utopia and the laws of this time and place are extremely dumb and discriminating.
> Businesses that hold a massive and unfair effective monopoly on communication and information are different from unremarkable coffee shops.
Youtube does not hold monopoly on communication or information.
> it's an action that you want to force on them by some mechanism of public rage
Lol. :) Public rage you say? Where is the rage? :)
> I don't get the obsession with removing dumb online stunts.
Let me help you with that: This stunt was done in order to get attention. You fuel it with attention and there will be more stunts. Either from this dude or others. You remove the attention and it dies out on its own.
I believe, and many others seems to agree this stunt was potentially dangerous and we should have less of these in the future. Removing the video is the way to achieve that, keeping the video up is youtube profiting from a potentially dangerous stunt.
> Appealing to protected groups is the weakest argument you could ever make for "Businesses can censor whoever they like".
>Youtube does not hold monopoly on communication or information.
What, pray tell, is that other service that has several hundred million of viewers and thousands of hours of video being uploaded every hour?
As soon as you tell me it's name, I'm going to concede that YouTube is not a monopoly.
>Where is the rage?
Are you implying you just call for censorship as a hobby without even feeling angry? that's even worse.
>You remove the attention and it dies out on its own
This is demonstrably false, the guy who made the video didn't have a trend to draw inspiration from, he thought up of a dumb idea completely on his own. Even IF (a very big if) your model of how social imitation works is reasonably accurate and taking down the video really prevents any further stunts of those type, other influencers will simply think up of new dumb stunts like this.
Let me stress, again, that the world is not a kindergarten and you are not it's caretaker. If people want to crash aircrafts to get internet points, that's completely an issue between them and the relevant authorities, those bureaucrats suck up an awful lot of tax money, let them work for it for once.
You don't get to decide for the hundreds of millions who watch YouTube what's acceptable and what's not. I and countless other people fund this shitty public record with the attention we give to countless 20-second ads, and I want every recorded moment to stay recorded, at least until they go out of business. You don't have the right to force me to respect what offends or worries you, don't worry about public safety, let everyone worry about their own.
Ad revenue varies widely. Somewhere between $1k/million views and $10k/million views is most common.
Don't forget that each view on a big video is a chance of a subscription by that user, which leads to more views on followup videos, more sharing, more chance of sponsorships, etc. So the total revenue earned by a 'hit' video is actually much larger than it appears.
This plane was going to be scrapped before he purchased it. There was also an odd modified fuel selector visible in the cockpit that is unlikely to be allowed on a non-experimental aircraft. Seemed obvious that this wasn't a plane he intended to use regularly.
It depends a lot on the genre. Some pay $3-5 CPM I believe (so, $3k-5k per million). And that's just the youtube ads; once a channel gets a lot of subscribers they can attract external sponsors as well.
There used to be a sponsoring segment in the beginning, but, if I recall correctly, they ended the contract after the stunt became known and it was cut.
Affiliate link, not a sponsor. It's a common ruse by YouTubers to refer to them as sponsors to suggest that there's a negotiated commercial relationship when there isn't.
He also jumped out of the plane holding a selfie stick. Call me old fashioned, but if I was bailing out of a crashing plane, that wouldn’t be the first thing I would reach for.
He probably will just be banned from flying for life, but will still have a much enlarged youtube audience and ad revenue that more than pays for the lost plane.
Under U.S. law, are there circumstances in which it could be acceptable to deliberately crash a plane?
In this case, it clearly wasn't (crashing on public lands with risk of starting a wildfire and polluting them), but if you wanted to crash a plane for a scene in a movie, could you do so? Maybe crashing on private property in a predetermined location with appropriate fire department support and prior notification to air traffic control about your intentions?
Can manufacturers perform genuine crashes (from controlled flight) on private property for safety tests, the way car manufacturers perform tests with crash test dummies?
So I'm guessing that outside of very specific scenarios, you would have a hard time getting permission to deliberately crash a plane anywhere in the US.
Yea, I doubt you actually need a specific permit to crash an aircraft in a controlled fashion rather than everything else like operating a huge drone etc. The issue is the YouTuber essentially abandoned control of the aircraft so it could have landed on anything.
I don’t see why not. The FAA didn’t say that his violation was that he intentionally crashed a plane.
> the F.A.A. said he had violated federal aviation regulations and operated his single-engine plane in a “careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.”
> The FAA didn’t say that his violation was that he intentionally crashed a plane.
the FAA did say he wore a parachute (unusual), opened the door before the engine quit, didn't follow procedure to attempt to restart the engine, and intentionally climbed out of the plane to film it rather than attempting to land it.
Intentionally crashing a plane seems a pretty good example of piloting in a careless/reckless manner that endangers life or property. There's not a specific rule "they shall not crash your plane" but this is more of a catch-all rule for these kind of situations.
There's a big difference between forbidding "crashing a plane" and forbidding "recklessly endangering people and property". The most obvious example being: there are circumstances in which crashing is unavoidable. Sully, for instance, crashed a plane in a way that protected life and property.
It is much more precise to just forbid "endangering people/property" than it is to try to enumerate every action that could be dangerous and then adding exceptions.
Are you suggesting that intentionally crashing a plane would not constitute operation in a “careless or reckless manner”? So as to endanger the life or property of another?
I could argue that there are cases where you could crash a plane in careful and not reckless manner. That is with extreme control, planning and probably minimising the potential damages such as environmental by removing as much hazardous stuff as possible. Plus having extensive planning on operation. Still unlikely to get approved, but I see it to be possible.
I think he's suggesting that the FAA regulation he violated was operating the plane in a careless or reckless manner. He did that by intentionally crashing his plane.
I am saying that the problem is that he was careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.
I am suggesting that a controlled crash where someone was not careless or reckless would probably not be a problem. Say for instance, in a controlled crash test by a manufacturer.
The FAR does generally make provisions for waivers of the regulations (e.g. 14 CFR 91.903-905 for GA, 14 CFR 107.205 for sUAS). Applications for waivers involve justifying your operation and convincing the FAA that you can conduct it safely. For something like that, they’d want it over a sparsely populated area or a restricted access area and with appropriate ground support for fire / medical. You’d also almost certainly have to file NOTAMs (maybe a TFR).
It's been done, not least for airliner safety testing - there's video out there of an old airliner (707 or 727, I want to say) being deliberately crashed by remote control into a set of spikes in order to observe the breakup.
I assume there's some permitting regime, and of course you'd need to find a place to do it, but probably nothing too onerous by the standard of being able to buy a whole airplane specifically to wreck it.
There probably isn't a specific permit or process for two primary reasons.
Firstly, crashing a plane intentionally is a rare thing and (until now, apparently) isn't the kind of thing the riff raff do so there's no reason to throw up barriers to keep the riff raff out nor enough volume requests to warrant a an institutional process for dishing out said denials.
Second, it is naive to expect a government agency to stick their neck out and accept some degree of liability for something like this (which is what approving a comprehensive plan would do). It's not like there's highly developed industry standards for plane crashing they can rely on.
The closest you'll get to a "permit" is probably the FAA knowing your intentions in advance and not objecting.
It's the times. And yeah, for all that it looks and sounds like this might have been relatively survivable with a quick evacuation, there's still a little horror in that cabin view.
Keep in mind that this guy isn't in trouble for crashing his plane per se, the FAA is on him for "careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another".
If you're something like a movie studio, you bring in the experts that help you plan a stunt to be done safely. Insured. Plan, plan plan. Also probably get permits, have fire fighters on standby, etc. Basically the exact opposite of "careless or reckless".
On the one hand, I’m pretty sure that act of crashing a plane isn’t illegal by itself and there isn’t a regulation that states you must get approval or coordinate with the FAA prior to a crash. But even if you manage to set things up so that you aren’t endangering the public, the moment you leave a flying plane unattended you have turned it into a UAV, and you almost certainly break the FAA’s rules on UAV operations. So if you’re going to crash a plane intentionally you have to ride it all the way to the ground :)
As with car testing, it is usually preferable, on engineering grounds, to perform the tests in a more controlled environment where the parameters can be tightly controlled and the outcomes exhaustively measured.
Here's a description of one such series of tests, and some video:
I’d imagine if they didn’t already have their own land to do this they could rent an old airfield or quarry and get assistance from the FBI like Mythbusters did back in the day to (potentially) blow things up
Somewhere there’s a form that allows you to crash a plane legally, I’d bet. Probably be a much longer form for a commercial plane though
Hell's Angels was released in 1930. The FAA didn't exist until 1958. The Civil Aeronautics Board, which preceded the FAA was formed in 1939. There was the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce [1] that existed between 1926 and 1934. Their handling of the 1931 Fokker F-10 [2] crash is what led to the creation of the NTSB as a separate agency. Presumably the DoC wasn't that interested in air crashes at the time. Probably understandable, considering the reliability of early aircraft.
There's not a rule against deliberately crashing a plane because it's not anticipated that anyone would. Of course there are a whole host of rules that would be inevitably violated by doing so in almost all circumstances.
That would, at best, get you a 709 ride (reexamination by the FAA to see if you really do qualify to hold your pilot certificate) or mandatory re-training. There is no universe in which the FAA would hear that and just say, "lol, totes, we get it man, planes are hard." Responding appropriately to an engine failure is a required skill for even the most basic pilot certificate and if you can't do it, you have no business flying an airplane.
Having had the forethought to wear a parachute and the steady nerves to use a selfie stick on the way down, among other things mentioned in the article, would complicate this defense.
A private pilot's license is a privilege, and being somewhat resistant to panic is one of the prerequisites of that privilege.
When you're in the air alone, there is no one to rely on but yourself, and failure to exercise proper judgment can kill people on the ground. So the FAA has broad leeway to determine that you don't have the right mindset for a private pilot's license.
I hate calling things like this a privilege. It's licensed and regulated for the safety and benefit of the people who fly and live underneath airspace (all of us).
There are too many things involving the government that have turned into privileges where it takes knowing someone or being able to afford access to obtain action.
Having the fortune of health/time/money is a privilege. Getting the license after meeting the requirements should automatically follow and not be at the whims of privilege.
I do get what you're saying, but there are people using "privilege not a right" literally to mean that someone gets to decide whether the person is worthy beyond some standard criteria.
Yup I see the distinction and I agree with you. It also means that you will loose that right for breaking any rules / regulations of that license; but the gray area I guess is the unwritten rules governing safety alongside written ones.
We’ll likely see amendments codifying those unwritten rules into existing legislation soon enough.
The FAA are not going to come down on you hard if you panic, but if you're dumb enough to make it clear that you're faking that panic for youtube views, they're going to throw every single book possible at you.
And I doubt this is the final action. FAA can't criminally prosecute but they can refer to the DOJ.
The NTSB doesn’t even travel to every GA fatal accident, let alone one reported as an old T-craft engine failure with no injuries (assuming the case where he didn’t post the video).
Of course, without the intent of posting the video, that plane doesn’t crash, so the NTSB doesn’t come looking then either.
You can say whatever you want, and many people who break the law do exactly that.
But in the end, evidence may show that you are not being truthful. For example, if the evidence demonstrates that you premeditated your actions, then nobody is going to believe that it was a split second mistake.
The funny thing is he would probably have gotten more views if he faked a loss of power but did everything right and put the plane down safely instead of bailing.
It would have been a more useful video for the subset of YouTube viewers that actually have/want private pilot licences, but "I crashed" as a headline is bound to generate more clicks than "I nearly crashed". Not least because people familiar with YouTube clickbait titling know the latter is quite likely to show a plane taxiing past another plane, or there being two planes within sight distance of each other in the air...
During covid there was a super viral video on Facebook of a commercial pilot saving the plane from crashing while landing in extremely windy conditions. Did over 100 million views IIRC. People love a happy ending
This is what I thought at the time. It just goes to show that guys like this project their own stupidity onto their audiences (this is not always an unsuccessful strategy)
I couldn't actually see anybody taking that line? There's a lot of quibbling about whether individual details like hiking to the wreckage indicate that it's fake or not, but there's also a pretty consistent view that there's a whole lot of red flags and the sum total is suspicious as hell.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29742283 - "I'm impressed how quickly folks here are able to arrive at the most certain conclusion that this was staged! While that explanation seems possible (and not unlikely), I keep coming back to Hanlon's Razor"
Oh good. As a PPL working on an instrument rating this gladdens my heart. The aviation community isn’t just pilots. Many folks contribute to safety including ATC, first responders, SAR, aerospace engineers, investigators and many more. If you’d like a sense of how invested some of these people are in flight safety, listen to ATC recordings of incidents where you can hear back chatter between control facilities.
This guys actions show a lack of appreciation for the work these people do and the care they put into that work.
There’s also the risk of forest fire.
I think the cherry on top would be if the USFS got him for littering.
There are very, very few things that get my goat like a willfully irresponsible pilot. What really bothers me though are the CFIs who keep signing these guys' flight reviews. I trained pilots for years and it is in-your-face, flashing-neon-sign obvious when someone like this walks through the door.
As someone barely qualified for MS FlightSim I think it's amazing how so many people, on the OG thread on HN and the Reddit ones I saw could point out things that made the whole scenario look odd. Pointing out little things that just made sense after it was laid out.
Terrible but educational. And also neat that so many "amateurs" could see the same flaws.
The experts are saying this was intentional, and I'm happy to believe them.
Having watched the video back when it came out, my first thought was that maybe he was panicky or a second (third, fourth) rate pilot. Of course, I don't know much about aviation AND I'm really bad at reading people's intensions.
That being said, even if my (admittedly bad) instincts are correct and this was accidental, I still think the FAA came to the right conclusion. They say you should assume ignorance over malice. However, there comes a point (or there are circumstances) where it doesn't matter what the origin of a thing is.
If you crash a plane into a hill, even if it's just because you're really bad at flying planes, then maybe you shouldn't fly planes anymore. We have plenty of alternate transportation options available.
Folks frequently underestimate the danger that we are exposed to in daily life, and this shows it. As a mechanical engineer who used to frequent r/watchpeopledie before it was closed I have immense respect for powerful, sharp or fast/heavy objects; and abundant caution towards things I am unfamiliar with (eg chemicals).
I sometimes wish some videos/cases of commonly used products causing accidents were taught in school/uni. The vast majority of people have no idea how dangerous an escalator can be.
(If you're downvoting me, could you tell me why? If there's something inaccurate in my post I'd then correct it as I've done in the past.)
The vast majority of people have no idea how dangerous a simple stepladder can be. One day I plucked my 75 year old neighbor off one whilst trying to one-handedly use a chainsaw (that a fit adult would have a problem handling with two hands, so forget about one) whilst holding on to the branch that he was cutting through. It took some convincing to get him to come down. They don't make that particular brand anymore this guy had lived through so much that I don't think he thought what he was doing was dangerous at all, but there really was no way that would have ended well. No safety gear, nothing at all, and a chainsaw so old that it didn't have a chain brake...
Just a few moments reading this should sober people up [1].
It should be a weekly or monthly practice on any job site to review the recent additions and think about how you might change or review your own safety standards to avoid them.
Wow. I could have easily been on a list like that a couple of times, one that stands out for me because I never saw it coming was uncoupling a loaded trailer that had 50 Kg on the balance when coupling it (which is a pretty safe amount, not too much, not too light). The load had shifted just a little bit backwards and after releasing the latch on the hitch if absolutely zoomed upwards. It missed me by a very small (uncomfortably small) fraction of an inch and if I had stood another 2" closer to the hitch it would have hit me full on. Very scary. The chains with which the machine on the back had been secured had gone a bit slack and the drive apparently was enough to shift the center of gravity to just behind the axle, that's a mistake I will never make again, always support a trailer front and back if you have to uncouple while it is still loaded.
Yes. I used to work for a company involved in a large, nationwide infrastructure project.
They had company-wide reporting on OHS incidents, and it was a daily litany of absurd and tragic accidents. Fatalities weren't common, but injuries and close calls were very common.
The vast majority are dumb things with ladders on scaffolds, or riding a forklift or a bucket, but most are pretty bad.
Perhaps the saddest part is the folks in the comments that talk like OSHA is some group you have to dodge “to get real work done”. I guess they just want to get maimed or killed to show fealty to their employer.
Wow these are amazing (in the sense that I’m continuing to be surprised in how many unique ways people can put themselves in danger). I appreciate you getting back to me with a link
The vast bulk of people that end up in the ER or the morgue are there for reasons that are more often than not just silly. The list of near misses is probably 10 times longer.
On my list of near misses:
- the trailer incident above (but not a scratch on me, so no accident)
- a central heating line in an old house that was shorted live 240V (and yes, there was a ground fault protector and no, it didn't trip, and hey if not for the apparently very well insulating paint someone probably would have died). Long story short: the circuit that was run from the panel to the heater didn't have ground so they stuck a grounded prong plug into an ungrounded socket and called it a day. Good thing I'm paranoid about such stuff and checked against a waterline before working on that system. After plugging the heater into a grounded extension cord the breaker immediately tripped.
- hoisting up roofjoists the knot got caught and the rope had gotten more and more tension. We were hoisting about 20 of these one by one and it had gotten more or less routine. That one was anything but. When the knot slipped over the point where it was held up the tension in the line had gotten so high that the whole thing came flying over the building.
- a windmill that I built got caught in a storm and refused to furl due to a minor assembly error. Fortunately I'm a better welder than windmill-assembler and everything held up to more than 8 times the design stresses but I'm probably a much happier person not knowing how close I came on that one.
- sitting on a roof of a building that was about to have it's whole front replaced I leaned forward over the top to check the angle of the drop only to realize that the whole thing was already loose. One single kick and there were only a few tons of rubble left to clean up. The number of times I drove by that house right in front of it...
- replacing lightbulbs in an old chimney the ladder gave out (one of those iron cage jobs). Fortunately some of the rungs were in better shape.
If I think for a bit longer I'll probably find more of these.
A couple decades ago I ended up in a seat belt class.[1]
Was taught by a trauma doctor. Trauma is the number one cause of death by a mile! Everything else is not even close! And the number one cause of trauma is people not understanding the basic physics in play around them in ordinary life, not to mention any sort of specialized activity.
They covered a car, forces, constraints, dynamics and did so with the math boiled down for people, rules of thumb, and simple scenarios animated and with videos (gore included!) aimed at everyone regardless of education level. I was impressed!
The trauma doctor loved doing the class, and questions. Anytime someone asked in a way that they did not have prepped up and ready to go, that doc added to their library of stuff and tweaked the two hour session to address the question. By the time I attended, nobody asked anything that guy did not know how to address solid.
After that experience, I have long felt we should be doing this education more broadly. Saves a lot of lives.
[1]Was that or a ticket on my record. Also, for the record, I believe in seat belts and was caught with one briefly unsecured by a small town cop. Poor timing is all that was. Truth is, the class was great and I would have gladly attended given an opportunity. I consider it fortuitous due to the high quality of education I received.
Very similar experience with my mid-70’s neighbor. I talked him down off the ladder more times than I can count. Sometimes he even had a glass of bourbon in one hand.
I really loved that guy. He died a few years ago after a series of strokes. He had worked his whole life in a paper factory at a time when 'personal protection' had entirely different connotations and vats with acid were large and open and real men bleached the paper for the cardboard with utter disregard for their own health.
So I can see some of what made him do these things (with alarming regularity I might add). His name was Jakob, which is a traditional Dutch version of my own and right after I moved there we hit it off as if we'd known each other for years, I still don't know why. When the front gable of his house became too dangerous the whole neighborhood chipped in with materials and work and we built him a new front for his house for a ridiculously low budget, which was both a fun project and made everybody on the street that much closer to each other.
I'd bet that if we could have gotten them together your neighbor and my neighbor would be able to talk for hours :) These old-timers are interesting, they all have their stories and it is definitely worth making time for them.
People in general are terrible at estimating the risk of infrequent but high-impact events. One in a million risk of death feels the same as one in a billion to a lot of people, but is literally 1,000x worse. COVID especially has revealed that some people are blasé about even 1 in 1,000 chance.
I had several arguments recently with multiple family members about food safety. They do very risky things like leaving warm (but not hot!) cooked food out on the counter all day next to the sink where they wash raw chicken meat. The bacteria from the chicken can easily splash onto the perfect growth medium.
But you see, they "never" got sick in the past, so I'm worrying about nothing. Meanwhile I've hugged the toilet throwing up all night twice from getting food poisoning from the cooking of a family member.
Food poisoning can and does kill people, but it's not seen as something to worry about. E.g.: "CDC estimates 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States."
That is odd to me. Food safety seems very important and who wants to be poisoned with a sore ass from the runs or vomiting? Weird. The bad thing is I have not been taught food safety but learned most of it by osmosis from various sources, but it should be taught.
I get arguments if I raise any food-safety-related topic. If I even politely suggest something, I get screeching as a response.
My father taught me something a long time ago:
There are three kinds of people in the world. 1) those that do not learn from their mistakes. 2) those that learn from their mistakes. 3) those that learn from the mistakes of others.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are in categories 1 and 2. Very few people are capable of avoiding risks they haven't personally encountered at least once.
It is not a matter of the food safety - I reckon people take a lot of pride in how they prepare food as it speaks to their family / upbringing / wider culture. Let alone the more basic people don’t want to be lectured to change their habits. I recently didn’t mention some off tasting food at a party to not upset anyone but I regret that now. But yeah … it is quite personal to people I think. Especially if they are cooking the way mama did it.
One personal incident comes to my mind. I once had an internship at a workshop doing metal stuff. I had to drill a hole in some component. They had these man sized drilling machines. I, being inexcusable stupid, tried to remove the chips (while the machine was running) with the end of my sleeve. I wore an old and oversized hoodie. The drill bit caught the end of my sleeve and started rolling it up. I was about to get shredded through the machine but some friend hit the emergency button. To that point the machine has rolled up my sleeve up to the shoulder. Only because the hoodie was oversized, my arm was able to slip out of the sleeve, so I wasn't injured at all. I can't think about that without shivers.
This YouTube channel from British Columbia does reenactments of work accidents for educational purposes. Here's one about an ammonia leak at an ice rink, which is a good example of the work they do educating.
You still have to make the leap that this guy who crashed his plane has the same level of awareness of the danger of heavy machinery as "most people" as the original commenter claims. With this being such an outlying incident that is honestly hard to do. Or in other words, I have trouble believing that many people could be as ignorant as the guy in the video. It's one thing to say that most people don't know how dangerous an escalator is but another to say most people don't know how dangerous deliberately crashing a plane is.
I think you on the other hand overestimate how dangerous things can be. You have exposed your set to a biased set of stories with a predetermined ending.
Like consider the following scene. A drunk man. He is lighting the fuses of small explosives and rockets shoot into the air. Then he stumbles into his house and finds his gun. He goes back out laughing and screaming. People look at him scared, what is he gonna do with that gun? He starts firing. Straight into the air. Happy new year!
People do this. They do this and live. Most of the time.
Those falling bullets do kill people though. Rarely is it the one who fired it or anyone nearby but a few people do die every New Year. Far more than can be justified with "It's just a prank, bro."
That's for tampering with aircraft "used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce", which seems unlikely for a private GA plane, even if you stretch the definition of "interstate commerce" like courts like to do. Plus the section is really about other people's planes, not ones you own, otherwise anybody performing maintenance work "disabling" a plane just committed a felony.
> That's for tampering with aircraft "used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce"
Is that not an OR requirement of paragraph (1), meaning that "sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States" would be sufficient on its own? That was my initial reading of the paragraph, but I'm not hugely familiar with US law.
"Special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States" seems to be defined here:
> “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” includes any of the following aircraft in flight: (A) a civil aircraft of the United States. (B) an aircraft of the armed forces of the United States. (C) another aircraft in the United States.[...]
I think the US Attorneys' Manual agrees with your reading:
- "Jurisdiction over acts relating to the destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities extends to "any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States."
There's probably a less specific crime he could be charged with. Even the FAA reg he violated—"careless and reckless operation"—is a catch-all the FAA uses to say, "we don't have a specific rule against what you did, but you were definitely being a dumbass on purpose."
If he made a claim against his insurance they might nail him for insurance fraud, with the FAA report to back up the claim that would have a pretty high chance of sticking.
The weird thing is, when I looked into this, I learned that the plane he crashed didn't appear to be his plane. In all his other videos he is piloting a different plane and the plane he crashed wasn't registered to him, it was registered to someone named "Laura Smith."
Edit: I just watched another video which claimed that he purchased the plane about a month before the crash, but didn't complete the registration until after the video came out (which was another month after that). Still suspicious.
It may very well have been. Used GA planes aren't cheap but they aren't thaaaat expensive.
>the bank will want to make a claim.
It would take a very foolish bank to write a loan on a plane (or boat) that is secured by said object. It's probably secured by something else and even if it's not they probably won't care as long as the payments keep coming. Remember, they're money dealers, not plane dealers. They'd rather have the money.
Lots of well off people still purchase things via loans. Also various net worth estimations online place him between $1M to $1.5M. That's not the kind of money where you automatically just pay cash for something that might be $50k to $100K, especially when net worth at that level is often (not always) tied up in a primary residence. There's no certainty here. And regardless, insurance is required on private aircraft, owned or loaned.
Him making a false claim would be insurance fraud, but if it's bought on a loan and there's an insurance policy favoring the bank, then the bank definitely can and will make a claim - it's just that the insurance company will then attempt to recover the money from this pilot since he's at fault, and is likely to succeed.
"likely to succeed" if the individual has the money for them to get... they may succeed in getting a judgement otherwise, but if the individual doesn't have the money, they likely won't get it.
But if the individual lied to the insurance company about having deliberately caused the crash, it is still probably insurance fraud, whether or not the individual was the one filing the claim, and can be prosecuted as such.
I’d normally say you get to pick one - make the video OR make the insurance claim, but given how stupid this pilot was I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to get both (and arguably NOT trying to claim the insurance itself might look suspicious)
The felony will be under reckless endangerment or some other statute for people who intentionally do criminally stupid things that could or have caused serious harm/damage.
You’re not getting off on some technicality where there is no specific law against a specific action. There are broad statutes to specifically nail people who think like that.
Edit: There is a lovely idiom for this—“play stupid games, win stupid prizes”.
I think he crashed in the middle of an unpopulated desert-ish area. I'm not sure what's the criteria is for reckless endangerment though, and maybe the intent matters more than the end result.
If you look at a map of the area, he ditched the plane in the exact place you'd pick if you were trying to stay away from large groups of people. That's one of the many aspects that suggest this was an intentional crash.
Depending on how crappy you want to go you can get one for $30k maybe, and I don’t know the monetization rates for YouTube but if you hit 10 million you might make that back.
Why would you need to make that criminal? It's already a crime to do something criminal like hurting someone else whether it's with a plane, a car, or a knife.
And it's an airplane, the ultimate sword of Damocles hanging over people's heads by a horse hair, yeah this was like a fucking kamikaze.
And like the other commenters say, there are means to do aircraft destructions properly, with permission and so forth, meaning in that case with 0% chance of killing living things and therefore no felony.
If he stayed with the plane all the way to the ground in control he could make that argument. The minute he relenquished control of the plane, there was risk it would go somewhere he didn't expect.
If what he did is somehow linked to attempting to start a fire in federal land, arson or w/e (which I don't think is a hard thing to argue), he's in BIG trouble.
If one or two people come out later and state they were hiking around the area when/where this happened, he's in BIG trouble.
Also, this is a wild speculation, but I'm sure 9/11 put in place a lot of dos and don'ts regarding aircraft and their use linked to terrorism. I mean, I don't think he was a terrorist, but if the local jurisdiction finds a way to make it look that way ... he's in BIG trouble, again.
I know this is a bit exaggerated, but I think they're going to throw everything they can at him, to make an example out of this sort of thing and prevent others in the future from attempting these idiotic "stunts".
From the article, it sounds like they can't even remove his license - they can only ask for it back and fine him for every days that he doesn't voluntarily return it.
I personally know Trevor from back in my snowboarding days. I always enjoyed his company and I hate to say it but anybody who personally knows Trevor knows exactly what happened here.
On that note, maybe I should clarify it’s not that he is dishonest or has a reputation for dishonesty. Rather, he was always a stuntman and a showman more than he was an athlete. To his credit, he always seemed comfortable with that reputation, maybe because he really enjoys scheming up stunts. Either way, to anyone who knows him, it would seem strange for him to buy an airplane and not dream up a stunt to perform with it. He also has the money to waste.
...Then get a two seater, hide the other guy off camera, and if you really insist on the narrative angle, stage a crash site?
The thing I don't understand is the destruction of the plane really doesn't add anything... Why invite the downstream complexity and bureaucratic ire of the most notoriously iron fisted, merciless, detail oriented, and humorless federal agency out there?
Like I get adrenaline is a hell of a drug. It can be a great high. That adrenaline spike is a completely different spike when you're getting your wings clipped, because you've demonstrated a remarkably poor grasp of cost/benefit analysis.
Like, I'm more open than most to the freedom to do stupid things as long as no one gets hurt... You kinda have to make a credible effort to guarantee that though. IIRC from the original video and thread, the plane actually ends up looping or spiraling around below him at some point, meaning he apparently didn't even bother to trim the aircraft/lock the controls for a predictable trajectory to impact.
Even having that thought on camera would have gone a long way toward getting this whole thing further away from scandalous controversy territory, because it would have at least demonstrated forethought and concern for what the plane would do afterward.
The crime here, in a sense, is being a perfect example of what not to be in my estimation. If the FAA does nothing, it kinda presents a major image problem. Which is bitter, I might add, because optics based justice is the worst kind in my estimation.
It can be reasonably deduced from context that GP does not mean "Trevor is quiet, dedicated, upstanding, sincere young man and this whole thing is a terrible misunderstanding."
I assume the vid is monetized because I see ads. Does anyone know how much someone can make from 1.7M YouTube views? I have no idea if it’s like tens of dollars, or tens of thousands. Trying to assess whether it was “worth it.”
Well he also originally sold a sponsorship for Ridge Wallets which was in the video. I believe he uploaded a new copy of the video that removed some things including that sponsorship. But I am under the impression sponsorships pay more than YouTube ad revenue.
Earlier today I watched a video where someone reported that his medium term youtube income averaged about 15 GBP per 10000 views (based on a couple of million views over a year). That's just about $20 US, or double what the sibling has responded. Both numbers seem reasonable to me, it's likely to be in that range $1-$2 per thousand.
Yeah, a $1 CPM for a creator seems reasonable. Depending on the audience you're targeting, audience targeting might be less than $3, which has to pay the creator and Google.
I feel guilty when I watch these crazy free climbing/BASE jumping videos. Feels like I am enabling their behaviour by helping them monitize their lifestyle.
As someone who is routinely out-and-about in wilderness areas of California (and other states), I'm offended some asshat can just chuck a ton or so of heavy metal into the ground there at a high rate of speed.
A side note: we clearly live in a society where appearance count more than substance, so spectacles are the core of social trends, a modern and even worse version of classic "panem et circense". Given that the point more than discovering and punishing those who try profiting from others need of spectacle/pleasure, witch in the end can be a legit job so many do in different form and different grotesque's levels, it would be interesting discussing how we got there and how we can correct the aim given that we all like being pleased and we all like easy things, like any living being.
The actual dominant school of though say "please peoples steering the where you wish, no good intentions will remain unpunished" my proposal is try finding ways of win-win games vs the actual win-lose ones...
There was also a video of a guy landing his airplane on water, and it was called fake too. I thought this was about this other video.
It's amazing the lengths the internet will go to fake content so it can look legitimate.
I'm actually wondering if it can actually be profitable to crash a plane, but that would also be insurance fraud. To be able to defraud aircraft insurance might still be quite stupid.
So even if he did not get reimbursed the aircraft, he might have made a profit. If this is the case, that means the advertising industry makes it profitable to crash airplanes.
About a month back, this guy got absolutely roasted in a private group of faa part 107 (commercial UAS) operators and we don't even hold manned aircraft certificates.
Your average prosecuted criminal is either pretty stupid, careless or overconfident with getting away with it, multiple times... And on last one maybe one or two slips are enough to collapse everything.
It may still be hard to prove intent by distinguishing intent from stupidity. Also, if he intended to crash the plane, he did so very stupidly on top, by not following most of what he should have done.
Just wearing a parachute in a plane is unusual and suspicious, but that can't be the kind of thing that holds up in court. There are legitimate reasons to jump out of a failing plane...
FAA isn't suing him though. FAA revoked the license. If he wants to get it back, I think the burden of proof lies with him to prove that it wasn't intentional, and made an attempt to the followings:
> Did he make an attempt to look for safe landing spot?
> Did he make an attempt to contact ATC?
> Did he make an attempt to restart the engine?
It almost doesn't matter what his intent was. He showed grossed negligence through his action.
I didn't say he should get back his license. Just that it will be hard to prove intent to anyone who wants to prove it. He may want to get back his license through litigation and then yes, he might have a hard time because he made those "mistakes".
I'd assume his insurance will have a word with him on the intent question though.
You keep mentioning the proof of intent. Intent of what? The FAA revoked his license for operating the plane in a "careless or reckless manner". The pilot was judged on the results of his actions, not on coulda/woulda/shoulda intent.
I have a very strong disdain for the kind of people level of cognitive dissonance it takes to complain that there isn't some highly specific law forbidding a particular fact pattern of stupidity and then turn right around and complain that America is puritanical because some random things considered mundane elsewhere are illegal.
Anyone who saw the video could tell it was staged. I could tell it was staged and I don't know the first thing about aviation. Every single thing about it was just off in so many ways.
I really hope they throw the book at this guy with criminal charges so others will think twice before trying similar stunts.
He actually does (did?) thank a sponsor in the video - Ridge Wallet. It was one of the really off things about the video. Apparently he must have re-uploaded it if it not longer contains the sponsor plug.
The things that felt off to me, a non aviation person, on first impression-
The opening text about him saying "I didn't think I had the courage to share this video." (This has also been removed in the apparent reupload).
The sheer amount of cameras/camera angles for a routine plane ride. Plus constantly pulling out the Ziploc bag full of "ashes" to show the camera.
Jumping with a fucking selfie-stick then immediately hiking back to the plane.
This one is hard to explain - He's general affect throughout the video coupled with the other videos on his channel.
It just seemed like the entire thing was trying to tell a story rather than an almost-tragedy caught on film.
At first, as a non aviation person, I didn't know there was a whole engine out procedure he didn't follow. I didn't really question his recommendation to fly with a parachute, and I didn't know that he flys without a parachute in his other videos. I didn't know he bought the plane a month before.
In the original video he had a Ridge wallet sponsorship read at the beginning of the video. After the initial blowback he re-uploaded the video with the sponsor read removed.
I can't fly, know little about airplanes, and can count the number of flights I've taken on one hand, and even I got the feeling the whole crash seemed set-up.
Revoking the flight license is one thing, what about blocking the account? I guess this moves also gets him a lot of antention and therefore followers?
He created the video knowing that there would be demand from people like us who simultaneously enjoy the content and the feelings of superiority that we get while watching it.
It hurts, but with out such demand, the video would never have been created.
This is like blaming the invasion of Ukraine on people watching combat footage. I haven’t watched it, but I don’t hold myself to any moral superiority.
Given the frequency, editing effort and dramatization of combat videos supplied by both sides one can credibly claim they are indeed seeking views. Many of them are akin to action movies and/or music videos. (Btw, this is not criticism; the belligerents have constituencies that are -- right or wrong -- greatly influenced by the ongoing events which makes the portrayal of these events a literal matter of survival.)
Ultimately Putin's power play is a spectacle intended to secure his reign as President For Life(tm). It's certainly a cynical trivialization to characterize this as "for views" but it's not exactly wrong.
He wears no skullcap. He wears nothing to protect his head from cold yet alone from crash. If he planned it, he'd wear something protective on his head.
I don’t know if it’s an American thing, but I definitely hear a lot of “stupid people should suffer serious harm” around me.
“Stupid people shouldn’t breed” is popular phrase. As in, they should have died to spare humanity their existence.
This attitude definitely shows in our legal system and how much of our population in prison. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should and I’m trying to think differently. :(
The popularity of such phrases as "stupid people shouldn't breed" seems to be correlated to the degree which the rest of society is punished for the once-upon-a-time actions of stupid people. Stupid people aren't really a big problem if you're not using them to set the lowest common denominator by which you treat everyone.
I think it's because of the asymmetry between how hard it is to create something and how easy it is to destroy something. For example, it takes a team of skilled people months to construct a house and 1 idiot with a can of gas and a lighter to burn it down overnight.
This actually happens a lot - like in california a gender reveal party burned down thousands of acres of wildlife, destroyed homes, created pollution, and endangered lots of people.
I think a lot of older school Americans have a real justice boner and justice in their mind is often eye for an eye. At least this feels true about the older, right-leaning generation I know. Justice in the US, traditionally, seems a lot more punitive than rehabilitory. I think that has fizzled off in the more recent generation and some policy is already starting to reflect that, i.e. marijuana laws and releasing people for that crime early.
Go check out some of the reddit forums on people doing stupid things and watch the "kids" pray for idiots to earn their darwin award along with calls for vigilante justice.
This is exactly what I worry about. Part of Liberty is actually using it. It's where the whole "home of the brave" thing comes in.
When people are by default free to do things... Yeah. You have to be willing to keep an eye out. And I do not ascribe to the school of thought that anything that creates a condition of "unsafety" should necessarily be controlled until it becomes an established regular thing that cannot be ignored. That's a road we already know ends up with no one having any room to do anything because you can dlways find someone who'll get their knickers in a twist about it.
The shocking part here is the video evidence of just not giving a damn, and not being genuinely "in the task" of being a responsible airman.
The lack of harm was luck. The same way I would judge someone harshly for firing a gun down a crowded street even if they managed to not hit anyone, I would judge someone who recklessly endangers others like this person causing a plane crash in a wildfire zone.
Is it actually known for sure that he crashed the plane for real and didn't just fake it with a bit of VFX? The times article seems to suggest that he completely cleaned up the crash?
In fairness, the article doesn’t include any statements from the FAA that couldn’t be gleaned strictly from the original video, so it’s not an entirely ridiculous hypothetical.
That's why I'd love to read their analysis, they're very interesting.
I'd have reasonable confidence in an FAA investigation. NYT however, I would be completely unsurprised to see them fabricating the existence of a FAA investigation entirely -- or them repeating the youtubers claim of an FAA investigation without ever checking.
Googling for site:.gov "Trevor Jacob" (and the name reversed) turns up nothing but the aircraft registration.
The NTSB report is probably not done yet and this is part of some immediate regulatory response to ensure that the guy doesn't do any more of that shit.
Well yeah, their investigation was presumably based in large part on the video. But they still did an investigation and found he actually intentionally crashed the plane, per the article.
I would assume that by now he would have confessed to the video being fake rather than take this amount of backlash, criticism, and now loss of his license.
Would it have been ok if he crashed it in the ocean? BP did much more terrible things like adding very toxic dispersant to oil floating in the ocean to sink it... (and I don't think that the fine they received because of the oil leak was because of that).
If he was able to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyering and bribes (oops, I mean lobbying and campaign donations) then yes I am positive he'd get away with it
There's really interesting observations made by the YouTube community - he had a fire extinguisher concealed under his pants right above his ankle.
Great that he got his pilots license revoked. He obviously is not mature enough.