Originally published at: Six months jail for YouTuber who filmed self bailing out of plane for the views | Boing Boing
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If this “influencer”'s chute had failed, it would have resulted in a more productive use of oxygen for the rest of us. What a stupid useless arsehole.
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Is… is anyone else getting supremely fed up with/bored by the internet and other humans on it?
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How fortunate, he’ll be able to find so much content during his incarceration.
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“I spent six months in jail and you won’t believe what I learned…”
“How to survive six months in jail.”
“How to make no knead bread in jail.”
These are just some ideas off the top of my head. He’s free to use them.
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… and perhaps a whole new career
“What are you in for?”
“I made an airplane disappear to cover up a crime”
“I think my friends would like to talk to you” 
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A YouTube short of picking a fight with the biggest guy in the cell block?
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Certain people on the internet, sure… Despite how bad things have gotten, I still found valuable commentary by some good folks.
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Oh my gosh, so many (rhetorical) questions!
Did he not realize that his initial flight and subsequent helicopter flight were tracked (and probably recorded) by air traffic control?
How careful was he at policing up all the debris at the crash site?
Did he think no one would notice a helicopter landing at the site (I doubt it hovered the entire time)?
Or notice crash debris on the back of a trailer?
Or the offloading of said debris at an airport?
The NTSB has YouTube access; posting this for all to see would have certainly piqued their interest.
Finally, there is a permitting process and designated areas for this sort of tomfoolery. I guess he thought he was above all that (no pun intended)?
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I’m somewhat surprised that he went through so much trouble to destroy the physical evidence of the wreck when he seemed to take so little care to make the video footage he posted of the crash itself seem plausible and not so incriminating. Aviation experts and amateur sleuths started picking the footage apart immediately after it was posted, pointing out all kinds of details that would be inconsistent with a non-staged mechanical failure, and even showing evidence that he swapped engines on that plane shortly before the crash in order to not trash a decent engine.
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Aside from the whole legal trouble involved, would he really make enough money from a single video to offset the cost of the plane, plus all the effort and cost of tracking down and disposing of the wreckage? How much does a popular YouTube video pay??
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It was a 1940 Taylorcraft BL-65, worth about $13k. This obviously goes down a lot if any major services are due.
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Well, what can I say. He clearly was the smartest guy on the plane.
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And he could have won a Darwin Award!
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This was likely seen as an investment; he’d get more followers to watch more of his content in the future.
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Pruno sommeliers HATE this one weird trick…
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I believe he lost his pilots license as well. He doesn’t get to make his original livelihood of being a pilot because of this stunt. Oh and I guess he can’t be an avionics YouTube star either. Way to burn bright guy.
Edit: he has posted a video, “Got my pilot license back! But going to Prison!” Christ what an asshole.
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I’m watching the video. Early in, he’s talking about the obstruction charge (from trying to hide the plane) and he says, “basically I got bad legal advice, but I’m accepting full responsibility.” Uh…no, you’re really not if you’re blaming it on bad legal advice. There is no fucking way any lawyer told him to do that. If they did, we would know about it because that lawyer would also be up on obstruction charges, and Jacob would be filing a malpractice suit against him. So we know that’s a lie. So he’s still not accepting full responsibility.
ETA: Later in the video, we see him driving his pickup…without a seatbelt on and with a puppy in his lap. This guy has learned nothing. Oh…he has two other dogs loose in the bed of the truck. Nice. … His entire tone in the video is that this is something that happened to him rather than something he did. I am glad to see that he is getting absolutely torched in the comments section.
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As a side note, be prepared to hear this excuse a lot from the ringleaders of the insurrection who tried to deliberately crash the U.S. government.
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