[imagesource: YouTube / Trevor Jacobs]

A YouTube video, scandalously titled ‘I Crashed My Plane’, has been causing quite a stir among aviation experts and online sleuths.

It shows Trevor Jacob, a former Olympic snowboarder turned social media star, flying over the expansive Los Padres National Forest in Southern California before he suddenly jumps out while wearing a parachute.

Apparently, the plane had randomly stalled out, forcing the pilot influencer to abandon it.

The video goes between a couple of amazing takes of the pilotless plane gliding and crashing into the mountain, and Jacob descending into a thorny bush with his parachute.

Jacob is then forced to hike in the wilderness until dark before being conveniently picked up by someone in a truck, who Jacob claims was “a farmer”, per Gizmodo.

You can already tell, based on a couple of standout facts, that this might not have been as much of a harrowing disaster and lucky escape as the YouTuber made it out to be.

The fact that he had a parachute on that whole time has some folks suspecting that the crash was premeditated, as well as the fact that there were so many cameras involved, documenting the entire ordeal.

The video, uploaded to his channel in December, has close to a million and a half views now. All comments have been turned off:

But that hasn’t stopped fellow YouTubers and aviation experts from pulling apart the evidence that it was all a publicity stunt to grab some views.

Even the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board in the US have hopped on board, investigating the crash and its cause.

The New York Times has more:

Jacob said in a statement on Saturday that “I’ll happily say I did not purposely crash my plane for views on YouTube.”

“Given my background I could see why people would think that,” said Mr. Jacob, who is known for daredevil adventures such as skydiving and snowboarding in Iceland.

“I’ve been filming everything I do since I was 5 years old. Documenting this trip was no different than any other day for me.”

But this denial is only spurring other pilots and aviation enthusiasts to refute the claims more passionately.

Robert Perry, a flight instructor who has flown over the Los Padres National Forest and surrounding areas for nearly four decades, said that what he saw in the video looked “stupid.”

He pointed out the main misgiving, which was that “you don’t fly a little aeroplane with a parachute”.

And while Jacob is adamant that he always flies with a parachute, some of his earlier videos show him flying without one.

The other discrepancy lies in the fact that small planes like the one he was flying can actually be landed safely from a high altitude when they malfunction:

“He could have landed even though he was over mountainous terrain,” Mr. Perry said.

“He was at a high enough altitude from the video that he could’ve glided 15 miles into some meadow somewhere, or road, and put it down normally.”

The evidence against Jacob is mounting, with Timothy Loranger, an aviation lawyer based in Los Angeles, calling the questionable stunt “all very convenient”.

Loranger pointed out all the things that “even a basically trained new pilot would do” but which Jacob didn’t, including restarting the engine and calling air traffic control before disembarking.

Not doing any of that is seen as proof that he was not in any actual danger.

A thorough investigation by federal officials should be able to tell whether the plane malfunctioned or was intentionally sabotaged in some way.

[sources:gizmodo&nytimes]