I’m curious if he was paid (by the sports parachute company for example).
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Looking at his channel metrics, my guess is he was treating this as an investment. If it catapulted his channel northward (as really huge stunts have done for other “lifestyle” tubers), the views in the longer term would pay for twenty airplanes. If he also got the insurance for it, then that’s probably win-win, he figured. I’m just speculating here, I don’t know anything about this guy, other than his channel is presently way too small-time to absorb a stunt like this, but he clearly aspires to be one of those channels-that-shall-not-be-named that can.
A single video, even with almost 2m views, will definitely not pay for the airplane. However the increased algorithm traction from said success (if he can keep building on the momentum from it) would easily do so in a couple of years.
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I saw a commentary about this stunt by a pilot on YT, and he concluded that it was highly likely this was a stunt and he should have his license pulled.
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The level of FAA investigation is relative to the damage caused. If a small plane crashes but doesn’t hurt people or property, then the investigation is usually a phone call between the pilot and the FAA. Kill something (cows) or someone, damage a building, tear down power lines, etc then the investigation is a lot more detailed.
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As a data point here, if one does a youtube video that anticipated 1m+ views, one might hope for:
Youtube revenue: $1,000
Announced sponsorship: $X,000
Undisclosed product placement: $XX,000
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Also, the FAA doesn’t want to be adversarial with the people it’s investigating – although obviously there’s going to be tension. If every incident is potentially criminal, the surgeon who flies his Cessna on weekends is going to lawyer up – instead of working with the FAA to figure out why it happened.
That said, as for cooperation, yeah. What other agencies who might want to prosecute him have here is a finding by the FAA that he abandoned his airplane – so a very key part of the prosecution in whatever crime you want to nick this guy with – is functionally settled.
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This was the first thing that came to my mind. We don’t need another spark to set off another conflagration.
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Even the way he was talking didn’t quite sound authentic. It sounded like he was posing/acting.
There were so many things wrong with the scenario, but one of the the most glaring to me was that he spent so much screen time talking about his “terrible” ordeal hiking through the brush, but he never once wondered how the engine could have failed like that, or pondered if he had done something wrong or missed something important — I would have been obsessed with that. But he didn’t care about the root cause of the whole incident. And he cleaned it all up before the NTSB could examine it. I’d be eagerly poring over the wreck with them to understand what happened.
So many more things…
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And in an exceptionally fire prone National Forest.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/lpnf/home/?cid=FSEPRD591911#
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This is exactly the problem when desperately trying for views, isn’t it?
Perhaps if YT stopped paying for anything, but, advertising.
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If he’d started a fire, he could have killed people, so, yeah, very much against community standards.
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Can they put him a no fly list?
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Where’s a big fat rattlesnake when you need one?
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If I recall correctly, one of the things that made the internet detectives most suspicious was that he didn’t file an insurance claim, but rather disposed of all the evidence incredibly quickly.
Prosecutors might be reluctant to bring charges under a controlling statute that was meant to punish zeppelin sabotage, but insurance fraud is a greased chute straight to prison.
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I don’t think the FAA has any say over who goes on the Federal No Fly List. That’s the realm of the Terrorist Screening Center, which is a division of the FBI.
None of which is to say he shouldn’t be prosecuted, just that the FAA isn’t one of the agencies with the legal authority to do so.
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I was thinking it would be poetic justice if the plane had circled around and struck him
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If you haven’t watched that video … you should. He’s a complete “click here” drama queen during the thrilling descent to reach a river bed and water. Then a few minutes later a car shows up and rescues him.
I don’t know how anybody believed a second of it. But I don’t watch reality teevee shows for the very same reason. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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I literally never saw any comments from a single person who did believe it. But there was a HUGE number of debunking videos posted almost immediately, including some that go into quite a bit of detail.
The fact that the FAA report came out this quickly (when crash investigations usually take a year, minimum) really speaks to the strong evidence of shenanigans.
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At the very least, it’s littering.
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This highly personal video about scattering a friend’s ashes is sponsored by RidgeWallet.
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