FAA investigating controversial crash video | Hacker News Reader

FAA investigating controversial crash video

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540 pointsnostromo414 comments

There's definitely some suspicious stuff going on:

- gave up waaaay too early compared to any pilot I've seen with an engine out

- skydiving rig[1] (bulky, more/less easy to reach handles, steerable) instead of safety parachute[2] (light, one accesibile handle, none/little steering, not intended for high freefall speeds)

- gopro on ~wrist~ selfie-stick

- long and stable freefall before pulling

- before jumping, he opens the door and looks straight down a few times, exactly like skydivers spot the landing zone before jumping

Basically I feel like I've watched an experienced skydiver on a planned jump more than a pilot surprised by an engine out.

[1] http://scrisc.com/image/cache/data/m2aad/tn_zoom_obrazek_88-...

[2] https://www.chutingstar.com/media/catalog/product/cache/dc97...

On the ground he sounds like he's faking how difficult of a go it is-I had to watch it with sound off because of all his complaining.

Yes, he says he needs water badly yet he's complaining loudly all the time. That's contradictory. If you need water and there is none, you better keep your mouth shut.

That's not a core competency of YouTubers.

I know you're referring to the tendency of many Youtubers to not shut up, but every streamer I've seen has invariably had as part of their setup the "massive drink" in large part because incessant talking requires heavy liquid consumption. So I actually imagine most YouTubers are actually aware that talking is not the wisest idea in a dehydration scenario...

It's not exactly uncommon for someone lost to record themselves. If he died, the recording could give family and friends closure.

I'm sure his family would appreciate his grunting, groaning and profanities.

Alternate possibility: a skydiver had engine trouble during a non-skydiving flight and used his skydiving skills with the skydiving kit he had with him to escape the plane. Not to say I would be surprised if a YouTuber did a stunt for views, but there are other explanations. Even for the fakey stuff at the end. He is a YouTuber, after all. Playing stuff up is habit for them.

Why would he have a wrist GoPro and a full skydiving rig on a non-skydiving flight?

Recording the whole thing for other friends of the deceased, skydiving rig because it's what he's used to or had on hand. (Hypothetically of course)

To try and draw a technical analogy, wearing a skydiving rig in this instance is really like buying your grandfather a high end gaming PC so he can use email because "that's what you're used to." It's plausible, in the sense that those words in that particular sort of make sense, but realistically nobody would ever do it.

Even if you've got thousands of solo jumps, if you're doing a non-skydiving flight and feel the need to wear a parachute (very few pilots ever do this), you're just not going to wear a full skydiving rig. It's several times bulkier, it's harder to move in the cockpit, and it doesn't fit the purpose, which is to allow you to bail closer to the ground after running your engine failure checklist and not die.

Look, I'm not claiming it would be a good idea. But if you're the type who wants to wear a parachute despite it being non-standard, and you've got the skydiving rig taking up space in your closet, and would have to pay extra for the usual emergency parachute -- maybe you don't have a ton of money (after aircraft maintenance anyway), or even think the skydiving rig is "better" in some ill-specified way -- do you really think it's impossible someone would just use what they have?

Like, if a high-end gaming PC is what you have on hand after upgrading, why not give Gramps a computer that will maybe take a little longer to bog down?

No one would want to sit on a sport parachute pack for funsies. They’re bulky and the cockpit is small. Even the acro chutes are slightly bulky and uncomfortable in a light aircraft cockpit. You wear them when flying acro; no one I know wears them when flying their aerobatic aircraft on a random trip.

Not to take from your argument but my retired in law just bought top speced M1 Max for 5k or so. He is using it for light browsing so total overkill but his argument was that buying highest package Audi was way more expensive compared to base model but nobody questioned him on that and $2k is just not worth worrying about if 1tb is enough for photos or not.

The same with parachute. He probably felt that flying in mountains on 1942 piece of crap is risky so he needed backup and that flight suite was what he had available and can use at the moment. Better than nothing and good enough not to hustle to get something better.

> He probably felt that flying in mountains on 1942 piece of crap...

Then the right answer is not take the trip in that airplane.

General aviation is pretty timeless, as far as vehicles go. If an airplane has regular annual inspections, decent maintenance as required, and a proven record of "not being a consistent pain in the ass," then it's likely to be quite reliable. I've flown stuff from the 60s and 70s, far older than I am, and I don't think twice about it. I do think about the general condition of the airplane and the maintenance trends I've seen, but age of the airframe just isn't a concern if it's still airworthy. If it were a "piece of crap," then it's not being maintained to something resembling airworthy. There are some out there, but they're rare.

And then, if you don't think it's the right plane for the trip, don't take that trip in that plane. Find a different route. Again, this is part of what you're supposed to learn in the process of getting your pilot's license. In general aviation, there are places you can't be, and there are places you shouldn't be - not in terms of "legal to be there," but in terms of "stupid to be there."

It varies from person to person, but a single engine, piston powered GA aircraft can't do an awful lot of things people would like to do with them. Or, at least, can't do it consistently. I personally think night single engine IFR is insane without a turbine up front and anti-icing equipment, though I've known people who do it. There are plenty of weather conditions you shouldn't fly in, and there are places you simply shouldn't be - downwind of a mountain ridge on a windy day is one of those places where the air will simply rip small airplanes out of the sky and dash them against the rocks. You can climb at 500 fpm up there? Cute, the descending air is doing 4000 fpm. On the flip side, if you're on the upwind side, you can get a nice boost from the rising air and, from what I hear, can damned near soar a Cessna on ridge lift in good conditions.

I'll tend to follow the valley, though, if I can find a route that goes where I'm going, and tend to skip as many ridge crossings as I can. It adds some time, yes, but I prefer to have an awful lot of big flat area under me in case the engine does go quiet.

If you're so concerned about flying in the mountains in a 1942 airplane, though, the right answer isn't to take a parachute and a studio worth of cameras. It's to re-evaluate the trip you're about to take and find a solution you're comfortable with.

As Syonyk said, the year of manufacture is completely irrelevant in a plane. The maintenance is so standardized that unless it has a lot of hours on the airframe - think 20k+ and you're in the right ballpark - or was a primary flight school trainer with 12-15k (not possible given its age due to insurance reasons), a 1942 plane with a 500 hour engine is all but identical to a 1982 plane with a 500 hour engine, as far as reliability and safety of flight goes.

Even flight school planes aren't that bad, it's usually just the landing gear that is a little worse for wear :)

> Not to take from your argument but my retired in law just bought top speced M1 Max for 5k or so. He is using it for light browsing so total overkill but his argument was that buying highest package Audi was way more expensive compared to base model but nobody questioned him on that and $2k is just not worth worrying about if 1tb is enough for photos or not.

The difference is that if you are already looking at a M1 Macbook Pro, the only downside from getting the top end one if you don't need it is cost. If that amount of money doesn't matter to you, then there's no significant downside.

Same with the Audi. If I'm looking at an A7 and don't care much about the overall cost, there's not really much of a downside to buying a S7 or RS7 as long as the roads in your area are decent.

---

GP's example of a gaming PC was a good analogy for this situation because a gaming PC brings significant downsides for normal users over non-gaming PCs. They're bulky, can be noisy, definitely not portable, sometimes finicky, etc.

As a pilot, I consider skydivers a weird lot.

I can understand a skydiver-first, pilot-second being a bit dependent on their blanky kit.

It does leave me with two glaring questions.

One, is where was he going? He states at the start the plan is to go paragliding in the mountains. Apparently without his paragliding kit. And up into the mountains with nowhere to land. And they're really not the wheels for bush landings, so I don't assume the plan was to land wild.

He does have access to bush-appropriate craft though, he has an earlier video (this september) where he tells stories of how scary mountain flying can be, and the recurring craft in that video has the balloon-type tyres I expect from bush flying. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMrwPPMTCmM )

But that earlier video raises the second question by repeatedly, consistently, shooting down his "I always fly with my chute on" statement.

I don't want to be "we did it reddit", but I can see why questions are being asked.

Maybe there is paragliding equipment at Mammoth?

I don't know a whole lot about skydiving or piloting (nothing in fact), but to each of your points:

> gave up too early

You and a couple other commenters mention this and not trying to land. Do we know how long it was before he gave up? Did he float 15 minutes before bailing after failing to restart, and that's just not included in the video? I understand landing on a small road would be possible in a plane like this, but since he's over mountains (3rd disclaimer, I don't know this area) - is it likely there would be roads available to him?

> skydiving rig

Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't know). Would it make sense that this is just "what he has," as opposed to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?

> gopro on wrist

Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with him when he bailed?

> long/stable freefall

What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to distance himself from the plane, which he later mentioned "came back around him" after he pulled.

I don't have any opinion either way, but I'm curious to know more about why some of these details are "give aways" on it being fake

You want to pull the cord a few seconds after exiting. 1...2...3...pull. Freefall is not the goal when bailing in case of an emergency.

Especially in a case like this when you need to hike your way out. Then why not pull ASAP and then fly back towards civilization and look for the best possible landing spot.

You can also see much better landing spots when he's hanging in the shoot that he could easily make. So why the hell did he end up in a bush like that?

And why go look for the plane? Like just focus on getting to safety. Nothing in this video makes sense.

> And why go look for the plane?

You would attempt to go back to civilization ASAP...Unless you'd need to, for example, reenable the magnetos/fuel switch in order to avoid "embarrassing" questions from the authorities.

I mean, if you were far from civilization, it's probably best to wait for rescue next to the crashed plane, no? Much easier to spot from the air.

From the video it doesn't even look like he called atc. But to answer your question, yes. He would tell atc where he's going and where he can be found.

The thing about engine out situations is that it's not that hard to get to civilization before you bail out. These light aircraft glide great, he should have been able to ditch (or land) closer to a town or road.

Are these switches really robust enough that "flipped during crash" isn't a likely explanation you could give to the authorities?

Needing to return to the crash site to destroy the evidence feels like a very forced narrative to me (though I know nothing about flying).

some are. The mixture nob for example could easily survive this especially in a slow splane like this.

But I agree it's not the strongest argument

Wouldn’t you want to go back to the plane to see if anything survived the crash that will be useful to help you get back to civilization?

Radio, food, water, warmer clothes, first aid kit, and weapons are all things that are plausible to have in the plane that would be nice to have when trying to either hike out or get help.

There's a simple explanation for both. Freefall is more dramatic and you want to be low enough that you get some good shots of the plane crashing into terrain for your video. Both help increase view count.

Landing in a bush and climbing out from bramble is also more dramatic.

Unless you're a skydiver by trade in an emergency situation and you fall back on what is familiar to you?

Let's say instead they did pull the chute immediately after bailing and then used the extra altitude to sail back to safety. Would you be more inclined to believe the stunt was real?

> Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with him when he bailed?

I had the exact same thought. If you look at 3m53s in the video, he has both a camera in his hand and the other GoPro remains on the dash.

> Is this because he is already a skydiver and/or was going paragliding (is this the same rig? Another thing I don't know). Would it make sense that this is just "what he has," as opposed to owning both a bail out and a sky diving kit?

Another set of comments discuss that traditionally pilots who might consider using a parachute generally bring a different type of parachute on board, and not one that would be used by normal skydivers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29730298

> 3m53s

Hmm, I see what you're saying - is that a second camera or a mount though?

https://imgur.com/a/REa64jn

Its a GoPro Fusion 360° we never see any video from.

Generally planes are good gliders. The only reason to bail out is if it is impossible to find an airport/landing strip within glide range and the aircraft is in a remote location where the aircraft crashing won’t matter.

Even in the latter case - there is limited benefit from jumping early vs. gliding towards civilization/possible landing sites.

IIRC dealing with engine out/glide contingencies is part of pilot training and licensing in the US

EDIT: the commenters on the FA also point out several distinct troubleshooting steps that are missing from the video including pre-engine failure signs + recovery steps, radioing ATC for guidance, flying above roads to ensure proximity to off field landing sites, and maintaining an updated list of off field landing sites along the route.

At the very least, several flying mistakes were demonstrated.

> IIRC dealing with engine out/glide contingencies is part of pilot training and licensing in the US

Recently got my Private Pilot License, emergency descents and planning for emergency landings is definitely part of the check ride.

And early, way earlier than I expected as a student. In my flight club at least they taught you engine failure explicitly early on, then practiced it frequently throughout rest of the lessons and training. I. E. My instructor would literally pull out throttle during a different planned exercise which was my signal for "oh crap I guess we are doing engine fail sim now" :-D

There are very very very few situations where I'd imagine trusting my parachuting skills over my Cessna gliding skills. That thing is meant to protect you all the way down.

Congratulations on the pilot’s license!

recently got gifted a plane ride, it was a something something pioneer, a low two seaters, and a dead stick landing was part of the routine, and was almost menial.

> You and a couple other commenters mention this and not trying to land. Do we know how long it was before he gave up?

It's true that there might be video cuts, but just visually guesstimating, there's very little altitude difference between when the propeller stops and when he jumps.

Paragliding gear is even more bulkier than a skydiving rig, there's various types depending on the flying you want to do, but here's a typical example: https://qefimagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/303/2018/0...

Even if he is a skydiver and pilot, you want to use the right tool for the job

- skydiving rig: larger, main handle is out of sight, has more snag points, built to stop you from terminal velocity (~120mph/200km) so the opening distance is higher

- emergency parachute: small, usually just one handle which you can see and very hard to snag on anything, meant to be opened in under 3s after jumping, definitely not for terminal velocity kind of speeds

> Wasn't it mounted on the plane dash, and he took it with him when he bailed?

I re-watched the video now and you're right, it's a selfie stick in his hand, as he moves the camera from one hand to the other. Another "unlikely things a pilot does in an emergency" from my side then.

> What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to distance himself from the plane, which he later mentioned "came back around him" after he pulled.

This ties in to the parachute type mostly, for rescue situations with emergency parachutes you want to pull ASAP, as the plane will usually fly away anyway (excepting maybe spins, but then it's pretty hard to exit anyway)

> Another "unlikely things a pilot does in an emergency" from my side then.

Well, these youtubers are strange people. It doesn’t strike me as that odd he’d consider his fame before his safety.

The alternative scenario is also that he crashed a plane just for views; grabbing video gear is rather sane in comparison.

> - emergency parachute: small, usually just one handle which you can see and very hard to snag on anything, meant to be opened in under 3s after jumping, definitely not for terminal velocity kind of speeds

Are you sure about that? Then you would have to bring some planes to stall speed first in order be able to bail out. Sounds like a huge flaw…

Softie parachutes indicates that the effectively risk free bail out conditions are 1000ft AGL and 100MPH, with a lower speed requiring more altitude. They don't specify a max speed, but it's worth pointing out that 100MPH is pretty slow comparatively.

> I understand landing on a small road would be possible in a plane like this, but since he's over mountains (3rd disclaimer, I don't know this area) - is it likely there would be roads available to him?

Comments in the article point out several viable landing spots are visible in the video including a (seemingly huge) dry river bed you can see just after the 5 minute mark.

I'm not a pilot (working on it) but my understanding is that most crash landing fatalities occur when the plane clips something like a fence or a power line because they couldn't see it on the approach or they miscalculated the glide angle. This causes the plane to suddenly pitch down and fall like a rock but the stall speed for a 1940s Taylorcraft is around 40 mph so as long as the pilot avoids obstacles, they can touch down and quickly dump enough kinetic energy so that the final impact is more like a slow speed auto collision on a residential street (minus airbags). The plane will be totaled, but the pilot will probably survive.

It's even possible to land up a hill [1] but that area is relatively rocky so I don't know how safe that would be

Edit: Forgot to add, with 40mph stall speed you only really need about a football field worth of space to safely land without totaling the plane, with a decent safety margin to boot.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvKdfa8CoBw

I’d say it’s understandable though that he prefers to jump. The risk of personal injury is probably much lower that way.

Still many reasons to doubt that there even was an engine failure, but that’s a separate question.

I'm not a pilot so I have no clue what is or isn't understandable. But based upon what other pilots are saying, it appears to not be a reasonable reaction in this case.

Beyond that, if you're flying an airplane, I think you have some responsibility to not jump out at the first sign of trouble.

Beyond that, if you're flying an airplane, I think you have some responsibility to not jump out at the first sign of trouble.

As the saying goes, "The captain goes down with the ship."

> Beyond that, if you're flying an airplane, I think you have some responsibility to not jump out at the first sign of trouble.

I agree, and in the video it looks like he abandons ship very quickly. But there could be a section of video edited out.

EDIT: It doesn’t help his moral case that he’s carrying a selfie stick though, and is filming himself as his plane is potentially landing on someone.

Licensed private pilot here. Absolutely not understandable at all. Planes are natural gliders. The only reason to jump out of a plane is if you have 0 chance of landing it safely. Unless you have no other recourse, land the plane.

I don’t know if all pilots are trained to do this, but my instructor literally turned off the engine multiple times during training and had me land without power. Whoever made this video did it for show; incredibly irresponsible.

I’m not a licensed pilot, so I’m just arguing from my intuitive understanding of the risks involved.

> The only reason to jump out of a plane is if you have 0 chance of landing it safely.

I understand that’s the responsible professional attitude. But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump.

As I understand it the landing attempt here would probably be on a dry river bed or a dirt road. That’s not the same thing as turning back to an airfield. There’s serious risk involved.

> I’m not a licensed pilot, so I’m just arguing from my intuitive understanding of the risks involved.

> But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump.

I think your intuition is wildly off base w.r.t. the risks of general aviation and sky diving.

If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. The leading causes of death are misjudging the weather and miscalculating fuel because most of a pilot's training isn't in how to fly a plane but how to troubleshoot it midair or land safely if that is impossible.

An unplanned skydive in a mountainous area in Southern California during Santa Ana season? Now, that's risky. (Edit) For perspective, Nevada sky diving companies won't even jump over Black rock desert because of the wind and that's a desert so big and flat that it's used for amateur rocketry in the 100k+ feet range.

> If you exclude experimental aircraft like fighter jets and kit builds, general aviation isn't much more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.

Sure, but now we’re talking about a situation where your engine has already failed… That’s very different.

> Sure, but now we’re talking about a situation where your engine has already failed… That’s very different.

What to do on engine failure is one of the first things they teach you after basic flight lessons. After that many instructors will even simulate surprise engine failure by cutting off the engine at random while the student is trying to learn about some other emergency situation. Engine failure is part of the check rides every pilot needs to pass to get a license.

You said one of the leading causes of death was miscalculating fuel. I.e., engine failure. (I assume you don't mean weight miscalculation)

By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane hit the ground."

When the engine stops working because it doesn't get enough fuel because there's nothing left in the tanks, the root cause is not putting enough fuel in the tanks, not engine failure.

> By that logic the only cause of death in GA is "plane hit the ground."

Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29731719 it seems like you are essentially saying "engine failure is not too dangerous; one of the leading causes of death is running out of fuel".

I did not say running out of fuel should be formally classified as an engine failure. It was more that I supposed that the effect on the airworthiness of their airplane should be approximately the same whether the engine stops due to failure or running out of fuel. So that makes your comment appear contradictory. Hence my prompting for an explanation, I'm quite willing to believe I misunderstood something of your post or about aviation so I didn't intend for it to sound glib.

My apologies, this discussion leans heavily into federally mandated jargon that has very recently been drilled into my head and it's all to easy to forget how overloaded the words are - as an SWE in my day job the irony is almost palpable.

I'm only a flightsimmer but even fighter jets can probably make it to somewhere with the kind of energy he had. A Space Shuttle or a Blackbird might have been a different story. If you're busting through Autobahn at 240mph and the car suddenly goes neutral, trucks coming up behind is going to be quite low on the list of immediate dangers.

I live not too far from where this was supposed to take place, and November is not a bad time for winds. If you go further East (or South as people say here) that may change, but Lompoc -> Mammoth ending somewhere described as "50 miles N of Santa Barbara" doesn't seem like it would take you there.

I only pointed out the Santa Ana winds to emphasize the "unplanned" portion. Even a 10-20 mph gust is enough to bash a skydiver against a rock outcrop, and (in my experience) that's the equivalent of a light morning breeze in mountainous regions.

I think it's pretty obvious this was staged and he very carefully chose the landing spot.

Your intuition here is wrong. Probably the better way to think of it: in a car crash, would you rather be the person in the car or the pedestrian?

While I have never flown a plane nor parachuted, my understanding is that the maneuverability options of both are going to be roughly equivalent, so that either option will have roughly the same ability to choose the site of collision and (for small aircraft) even roughly the same speed at collision. And that makes the choice down to having a layer of metal that can absorb some of the impact for your versus having to be in the exactly correct position to absorb the impact energy best with your body.

Unless cars have ejection seats it's not the same comparison. Pedestrians in this case are potential hikers or people in the area.

Another licensed pilot here (but not a skydiver).

I would have attempted a controlled crash over gentle mountainous terrain like this. You want to dump the aircraft's kinetic energy rapidly but not suddenly -- gliding into the side of a cliff will kill you, but keeping the airplane pointed forward while shearing off the wheels and crumpling the nose is fine. It looked like there were several areas where this would have been relatively safe to attempt. You don't need a nice flat field for a survivable crash.

After you're on the ground, you also need to be able to survive (possibly for days), and then be visible enough to be found and rescued. Staying with the aircraft is usually considered the safer approach, both for visibility as well as the emergency gear that you're supposed to be carrying in the back.

The only terrain where I'd seriously consider bailing out (assuming I had a parachute) is dense forest with no clearings. Surviving a crash like this is incredibly difficult -- you hit a redwood, shear off your wings, and then plummet 250 ft to your death. It'll be hard to spot the wreckage of a small plane from above. Even with a parachute, there's a serious risk of getting stuck in a tree (or impaled by branches). There are basically no good options here.

In short, mountains aren't so bad. But be super careful flying over forests. If this video was a stunt, there's a reason why he decided to stage it over mountains rather than a forest.

> I would have attempted a controlled crash over gentle mountainous terrain like this. You want to dump the aircraft's kinetic energy rapidly but not suddenly -- gliding into the side of a cliff will kill you, but keeping the airplane pointed forward while shearing off the wheels and crumpling the nose is fine. It looked like there were several areas where this would have been relatively safe to attempt. You don't need a nice flat field for a survivable crash.

This sounds pretty scary though… If you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on, don’t you think you’d be tempted to jump instead?

>you were an experienced skydiver, with your gear on

You would controlled crash the plane because you would know that jumping over mountainous terrain with vegetation is a great way to break a bone which is going to make getting the heck out of there really, really suck.

A plane like pictured is going to stall at like 40mph so that will be your approximate crash speed, which is really damn survivable in an aircraft with a 4pt belt to keep you off the hard bits of the cabin.

Risk of some bruising and maybe a concussion beats risk of broken ankle any day.

No, even then it’s the wrong call. You’re forgetting what happens when you land after jumping out of the plane if it’s not staged. No cell service, no epirb, no flares, no first aid kit, etc. One broken leg because you floated into the dense trees and you’re dead.

Experienced sky divers get to choose their jump points and landing sites. They don’t get thrown out of the plane at an arbitrary time with no preselected landing side.

I think the risk of dying in a crash are still too high. If I had a parachute and a knew there was nobody else who would be hurt if I bailed out, I think the parachute is safer. The plane is going to crash either way.

You're in a metal shell in the plane. Even the small trees can impale you under a parachute.

I used to work in SAR. I've seen crash sites where tree branches punctured through helicopter blades.

It's not so cut and dry as you might think.

I have plenty of hours flying planes (unlicensed - while doing aerial work and playing around to kill time thanks to my instructor pilot), and have a limited amount of experience skydiving.

One thing in these comments I haven't seen said: F*K that plane. Off runway landing has significant risk. Parachute is so close to 0.0 risk that you do it just for fun on a day off. I wouldn't do an off runway landing just for fun on my day off.

The thing is staged, no question. The guy knows he messed up and will pay for it. But if I had to decide between my life and protecting a bunch of metal tubes and (fabric | aluminium, not sure), I know what I would do.

As a skydiver, I think it’s important to note he didn’t have an emergency chute but a regular sport one. They are extremely maneuverable and if there is a small clearing or riverbed nearby (he looked down for such a thing) the risk of injury is nearly non existent for an experienced skydiver.

The whole thing looks planned, but if I were in the same situation I’d definitely be jumping over trying to crash land a cheap plane in a riverbed or clearing.

>>"But if it was me in that plane and I saw a 10% risk of serious bodily harm / death in trying to land and a 0.1% risk in jumping, it would be tempting to jump."

Of course. Point is, risk does not actually turn that way. Parachuting into rocks is not exactly safe and easy either! Vast majority of pilots are much more trained to safely land than to safely parachute. Movies give us this idea that you pull a cord and land feather like. That is empathically not the case. Especially for an untrained person, parachuting on safe ground will break your limbs virtually guaranteed.

Small airplanes have very low stall speed. If you fly into the wind you can have your land / crash speed very low and very controlled, you are trained to find best possible spot, and are buckled inside metal chassis.

I genuinely believe most licensed pilots would stay inside the damn plane :)

> Vast majority of pilots are much more trained to safely land than to safely parachute

So if the person is an experienced skydiver, doesn't the equation change towards ditching the plane?

Mind you, no one is arguing whether the video is real or not, that's conclusive that it's likely fake. But what if an experience skydiver was actually in this situation?

if skydiver has a pilots license he will always prefer to try to land it, unless the wings broke off

I am not an experienced professional skydiver so I really cannot speak to that. :-/

I think he should still follow the procedure far further than showed in video (where he doesn't follow ANY), and I still feel he should have tried far harder to find a landing spot - cessna 152 has 11 to 1 glide ratio, which means for every foot of altitude you can travel 11 feet of distance. I imagine his airplane has roughly comparable gliding distance so given his original height, he had a LOT of time and options he seemed to have immediately squandered. At best, assuming reality, that feels like a yahoo parachuter rather than methodical pilot, and not advice / approach to follow.

The vast majority of private pilots are not trained parachutists and don't fly regularly with parachutes.

I think an important thing to note here is that as a pilot, bailing out does not absolve you of your responsibility for the safe operation of the aircraft, so if it hits something or someone when it goes down, your still on the hook for that.

Its also important to remember that wilderness does not mean people are not there, so if you do something stupid thinking noones around so noone can get hurt, you might still hurt someone.

> Its also important to remember that wilderness does not mean people are not there, so if you do something stupid thinking noones around so noone can get hurt, you might still hurt someone.

And just because people aren't directly in the path of a falling plane doesn't mean that the pilot isn't putting people's lives at risk. The recent rains have improved the situation a bit, but a plane crash in the remote mountains of Southern California? That's how you get wildfires.

Most USAAF WWII training manuals all tell pilots to bail out in preference to trying to glide to a landing at night or over rough terrain, because the odds of surviving a landing under those conditions are poor.

Mind you, those planes stall at much higher speeds, and those pilots all wore parachutes and trained on how to bail out if needed. But I wouldn't go so far as to say there's never any reason to jump.

I agree the video looks intentional.

Irrelevant, this isn’t a high speed aircraft, which totally changes the risk calculus of a crash landing.

It's also not being flown in warzone...wtf

The manuals I refer to advise a bail-out under some conditions, even flying stateside. For example, this manual is for students training in the AT-6:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth873939/m1/76/

"Never attempt a night landing except on a lighted field. So if you are completely lost at night, you have no other choice than to jump. Climb to at least 3000ft (above the terrain), trim your airplane for level flight, cut the switches, and bail out. It may be heartbreaking to crash a fine airplane -- but it beats cashing in your own chips."

"If your fuel supply is running low, if the terrain (mountains, swamps, water, or heavily timbered area) offers no possible landing place, you must bail out."

"If there is no suitable field and the weather is closing in from all sides, climb to 3000ft, trim your airplane, cut the switches, and bail out."

keyword is "night"

Military pilots are gonna be wearing parachutes. Civilian private pilots don't.

Acceptable risk for military aviation is not the same as acceptable risk for civilian aviation.

That may be perspective from outside but not I think for actual pilots. I have not finished my flight training yet but already I've had enough prep to be way way way more comfortable gliding a controllable predictable metal cocoon designed to protect me, over parachuting :O. I think for all but experienced pros, parachute is a guaranteed personal injury. Movies are way way off when it comes to ability of a random person to safely parachute even in most controlled situation.

I thought you were going to post Steve Henry's stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zDo7hkmCNY

There's a great clip of him parallel parking a tail dragger at some fly in on the side of a mountain somewhere in his videos.

For engine failures turning in to fatalities, the biggest cause are stalls/spins where the pilot fails to maintain airspeed, unload the wings and stay coordinated.

Flying the aircraft just above stall speed into the side of a barn is far more survivable than entering a stall or spin at 200ft.

Pilots panic and yank back the yoke in denial that they're going down. Or they try to “stretch the glide” in hopes of making it back to an airport. Or if the engine failure is on take-off, they don’t shove the nose down fast enough (you literally have seconds to do so before airspeed gets dangerously low)

I'm talking about crash landings in general. It doesn't matter what caused the emergency landing, what makes them dangerous isn't crashing into something at the end, but snagging an obstacle right before touchdown that sends the plane cockpit first into the ground. Power lines don't care about the state of the power plant.

Casual skydiver with no piloting experience here.

> > skydiving rig

Not really. Those are really different material, with really different design constraints. Skydiving parachutes open slowly so they aren't a good fit for an emergency situation because if you have to leave the plane too low, you're pretty much dead, and as long as your plane is still high in the sky, I guess there's little reason to leave it…

> > long/stable freefall

> What is the norm for this? My thinking was this was to distance himself from the plane, which he later mentioned "came back around him" after he pulled.

AFAIK safety parachute don't open well at high fall speed (unlike skydiving ones) so you want to open it quickly and not enjoy your freefall.

Jumping in that terrain with a safety parachute would be pretty dangerous. You don't have any control, so just as well crash the plane in a flat spot.

Skydiving rigs are also big which make them annoying to fly with. You can tell early on in the video that he's basically on top of the yoke, which would be extremely obnoxious for obvious ergonomic reasons. The idea that someone would "always" fly like that (as the pilot claims) is ... dubious.

Also, there are other videos of this guy flying without that rig, which doesn't help his case.

Unless he was in Alaska, there are always roads relatively close by from a gliding perspective.

For more perspective, in the mainland US, the furthest you can get from a McDonald’s, let alone a rode, is 107 miles as the crow flies.

A Cessna can glide 9000 feet per 1000 feet altitude loss so at 10k feet that thing can go roughly 17 miles.

A 17 mile radius gives you 900 square miles to find a place to land. Even deep in the Rockies wilderness areas I’m familiar with, there are going to be several forest service roads available and plenty of natural clearings with that kind of range.

Skydiver and pilot here. A skydiving rig can't be used for paragliding. Also a skydiving rig is incredibly uncomfortable worn as pilot of the plane. Pilots use emergency parachutes that are smaller and designed to be used sitting in an airplane seat. Pilot rigs are used primarily for aerobatics.

The most suspect thing is jumping with a selfie stick.

It's already established that he's a Youtuber and has cameras, why would you not take all your cameras with you when jumping out of the plane? Not even for the cool factor, a gopro costs like over $500, why would you not take it with you?

Because if it were an actual emergency, survival is your main priority, "great footage of it" isn't a priority at all.

And:

(1) GoPros are a lot cheaper than $500.

(2) GoPros are a lot cheaper than any flyable airplane.

Of course, I wouldn't fly in a plane with a pilot who had and used a selfie stick in flight, so my judgement clearly isn't up to that of YouTube Famous Stars.

(1) GoPro Hero10 has MSRP of 500$

(2) He (supposedly) couldn't save the plane, but taking the GoPro takes 5s.

> used a selfie stick in flight

Everyone keeps talking about selfie stick, it was just the normal leg attachment, not a "selfie stick": https://i.imgur.com/hOkcxOa.png

> "great footage of it" isn't a priority at all.

Where is this "Great footage"? He's literally just holding the camera by the leg attachment. Half the falling footage is just his feet or chest, and that's already the heavily trimmed version, which I assume he only kept the better part of the footage.

Again, to me it just seems like he grabbed whatever he could quickly and jumped out, which is a natural instinct.

> Do we know how long it was before he gave up?

We don't need to know this. We can clearly see ample altitude at the time he abandoned the plane. Although there are reasons to jump at great altitude (severe fire, etc.) none of those reasons are apparent here.

When a competent driver loses engine power while driving they do not immediately stop their vehicle in the middle of the road. They will use the available momentum (pulling to the shoulder or whatever) for the benefit of their own safety and the safety of others, and ground vehicles are deliberately designed to achieve this. The analogy for (conventional, fixed wing) aircraft is altitude; this pilot wasted available altitude for no discernable reason despite the fact that he had a perfectly functional glider.

No competent pilot would do that. So the best case here is an incompetent pilot that shouldn't hold a license. All other possibilities are some form of attention seeking fraud and also reckless endangerment.

Look at 3:33 into the video, about where he's about to ditch it.

It's easy to identify the Y shaped delta of the mountain ridges just 2 clicks north of the Manzana School Camp, with the plane travelling westwards. 34.8081872, -119.9438522.

Given the near service ceiling altitude the dude had plenty of opportunity to double back to eg 34.7683290, -120.1101663 . Not exactly sure how much gliding range it has, but can go to just over 60km/h before stalling, and can't be radically different from a Cessna which will do "1.5 nautical miles per 1,000 feet of altitude above ground level". The landing gear appears made for grass fields.

Of course, one might speculate, given lack of in-plane footage and everything else, he could also not have throttled the airplane and landed it normally instead of pulling this pathetic stunt. Ie it appears reasonable to assume that the entire thing is a complete fabrication.

Who carries a hip altimeter (a few frames of 4:03) and full parachute when flying, as well as covering every angle of the "emergency departure" with GoPros, not a single frame of the "emergency" instruments despite another GoPro in full view, freefalls for ages instead of taking their time to assess etc, then avoids several flat spots including flat riverbeds that were a great alternative to doubling back if completely panicking on basic arithmetics, only to land in dangerous bushes instead "for the views". And then complains of being so so thirsty whilst carrying the whole chute around in his "life and death" situation.

Look at the YouTube history, the guy's pathological prankster.

Lots of camping sites and such in the area, just look at the coords in your favourite map provider. It was reckless beyond belief.

Should I not be wrong with my analysis (having spent a few hours reviewing this), I hope he goes to prison for a very long time.

Why should he go to prison? Faking an airplane crash for YouTube views, while clearly in bad taste, doesn't seem worthy of jail time.

Reckless self endangerment maybe? But that also doesn't seem to rise to the level of "put you in jail".

If the crash was intentional, then he's certainly liable for violating littering laws by depositing a moderate amount of wreckage in the mountains which he didn't clean up. Again, not worthy of prison time. Probably a hefty fine though.

Last I can think of is if he makes a fraudulent insurance claim; in that case then yeah he might be eligible for jail time, but I don't think we know whether he filed an insurance claim in the first place.

> Why should he go to prison?

"Reckless endangerment", or whatever it's called when you let a plane crash where it may -- i.e, potentially onto people -- in stead of bringing it to a controlled glider landing? If you let your car coast on in traffic and bailed out at speed, in stead of rolling it to a stop on the hard shoulder, then you'd get caught for dangerous driving, wouldn't you? (Should you not?)

A follow up nitpick question, would a hip altimeter be part of the jump suit he's wearing already - assuming the "he just wore what he had" theory, which it seems isn't plausible, but just playing hypotheticals.

Fair point. I guess he should have said: "I never go solo flying without my jump rig" instead of "I never go flying without my parachute".

In addition to everything you mentioned there's two fixed mount gopros, one on the wing aimed at the fuselage, and one on the tail aimed forward. Footage from these is seen in the first 15 minutes of the video. Absolutely some kind of publicity stunt.

I could believe that if the channel had a history of that kind of footage. But I just skipped around a few past videos (actually most of the channel content is not about flying) and couldn't see one.

I'll let FAA assign blame, but sure does seem like he added that angle because it seemed like a cool shot for the crash.

Edit: Also, he doesn't seem to fly with a full parachute normally, for example: https://youtu.be/OnOrfJo2LE0?t=253

That's not so unusual. Tons of student pilots mount external gopros for routine training flights these days.

Not only it's not unusual for a Youtuber who frequently posts videos of themselves flying, but it also would explain why they would trek to the crash site, to recover expensive equipment, especially if the crash was nearby (which it was due to the plane turning and coming back and almost hitting him).

The strongest tell for me was that he hiked first to the crashed plane. The broken plane isn't going to save him, ergo, by going there first he suggests he knows he knows that he does not need saving. The second tell is he didn't show the part where he declared a mayday to air traffic control, or radio anybody. Either it didn't happen, or the exchange explains why he knew he needed to hike rather than wait. The third is where he encounters the driver at the end and buries the lede-- plane crash-- instead making it sound at first like an emergency landing.

From the safety of my armchair, it feels reasonable to go to a known landmark? It is a lot easier for search and rescue to find a crashed plane that a guy wandering on the ground. Additionally, the plane might contain salvageable food, water, medkit, etc.

All else being equal yes. But all else is far from equal here. The plane is on a slope in the brush. There is a clear flat riverbed nearby. When those are your choices, you definitely want to pick the riverbed because that's where water the the path to civilization are.

And indeed he did eventually get himself to the riverbed. If he'd just landed there in the first place he would have shaved many hours off the hike and avoided nearly falling off a cliff.

In the video it sounded like he thought the plane had a water jug in it and was talking about how thirsty he was. That part was reasonable to me. But as a non-pilot the flight itself was pretty sketchy.

It looks like he ditched it on the hurricane deck, that's as close to a landmark as you'll get in that range. It's more or less the midpoint of a 20-mile wide mountain range, pretty sure he could've glided far enough to get to plains on either side.

It's worth noting that there's decent cell service there if you just hike up to a ridge. Fair number of other hikers out on the trails too, his odds of bumping into somebody within a couple hours was high.

It's obvious why he returned to the plane: to collect the cameras and put the settings back that he used to stall out the plane.

Why wouldn't he just have done that before bailing out?

The camera on the plane was there to film the crash, for his video, so it's pretty straightforward why he would not remove it before bailing out.

As far as the controls, it just depends on what was done. At some point he started filming, and he couldn't change any controls after that without giving it away for free.

He made a comment about how he was expecting a water bottle in the plane. Seems reasonable to me.

Isnt that what survivorman and bear grylls do in every episode?

Both make it abundantly clear that their "survival" situation is artificially contrived (i.e.: traveled into the target area with acknowledge purpose of concocting a "survival" scenario, have safety teams either on-site or nearby, have a decent idea how to get out if not an actually arranged plan).

Seems this guy is claiming it was a genuine malfunction/crash/survival case, while giving numerous "tells" that it wasn't. Deliberately disabling and abandoning a functioning aircraft in-flight over potentially habitated/occupied territory (i.e.: it's gonna crash somewhere, and perpetrator doesn't know it won't kill someone) is actionably reckless endangerment.

Putting all of that aside, do you not see any logic in getting items from the plane that could be used in an actual real survival situation? For example a first aid kit, or emergency tarp?

The concern isn't the normal emergency items normally in the vehicle (airborne or other), it's the other stuff that normally wouldn't be there if there wasn't a decided intent to use it during the trip.

I'm very much into survival/preparedness, and am quite aware of gear that stereotypically one would, or would want to, take into a genuine survival situation but in no way would actually haul around on a regular basis for the unlikely chance of actually needing it - stuff that I would be quite suspicious of should the "victim" actually have handy.

For this case, many other comments here are startled about the presence of a full sport parachute, already being worn, during an ostensibly mundane "just traveling" trip ... along with wrist-mounted GoPro, selfie stick, etc.

> Both make it abundantly clear that their "survival" situation is artificially contrived (i.e.: traveled into the target area with acknowledge purpose of concocting a "survival" scenario, have safety teams either on-site or nearby, have a decent idea how to get out if not an actually arranged plan).

Worse than conceived. Totally fake.

Bear Grylls filmed an episode near where I live. It was some how to survive a white water disaster whatever. He had a scene where he was crying about missing his family, and how many other people in his exact spot would be dead this far out in the wilderness… issue is, I know exactly where he was, and you can hear the highway from there, it’s literally just out of scene.

Grylls fakes it.

Stroud doesn’t.

Going to the wreckage is a reasonable idea. There will be an ELT in there which is what a rescue crew will come looking for. Plus it's easier to spot from the air than a lone person. And maybe something useful survived the crash.

That said, it's an incredibly fake stunt video.

Yeah but once you make it to the plane the best bet would be staying in that area after activating the ELT, perhaps only making slight excursions in search of water or food.

The plane even if it didn't have an ELT would be a great beacon for rescuers that works come looking after he didn't arrive back on time.

Great point! My grandfather's B-17 caught on fire back in the 1940's flying over California and the crew all had to bail out. They definitely did NOT hike back to the crash site.

Further, his video conveniently cuts to the tail camera when the engine goes out, making it impossible to see if he manually cut fuel, mags, etc (which I strongly suspect he did).

We also never see him even attempt to restart the engine - let alone glide to a reasonable area to land (at the altitude he was at, he had time to think before jumping as a last resort - he also crashed the plane near what appears to be a road, which would have been sufficient to land such a small aircraft).

Instead, he immediately opens the door and starts looking below himself... with his conveniently already strapped-on parachute... and his go-pro selfie-cam. Without even attempting to call mayday or restart, he jumps.

He jumps without even radioing his location on UNICOM or closest airfield freq - made evident by his repeated claims he has no phone service and therefore can't reach help (I suspect he was hoping this entire video would avoid notice of authorities). He had plenty of time to radio for help and attempt a restart at the altitude he was at.

Everything about this video screams fake crash.

I hate to second guess a pilot in a real situation, but nothing about this video makes me feel it was a real situation. Seems like this youtuber was trying to get some easy views and that sweet, sweet monetization. What a shame, really gives the aviation community a bad rep if there's folks out there like him.

Agree 100%, easy to restart, radio unicom, and glide to possible safety, it's even windmilling so unless there really was no fuel... but I just can't fathom someone would do it for the views.

Scary, and does youtube even pay that much? Isn't it like $1000 per million views?

> Isn't it like $1000 per million views?

That ($1 cpm) would be relatively low.

Average cpm is $2. Depending on numerous variables, this can go higher — $7-$13 is average cpm for certain high value niches.

But at this time, the video only has 165,000 views. Unless we're really early and it's going to go viral and blow up to millions overnight... it seems like it was not the smartest of plans.

It’s not something I would do for a number of reasons.

In terms of cost effectiveness — that is, leaving out the ethics aspect — this gambit could make sense if he converts those views somewhere else in a sales funnel (not sure he has one). As a simple example, increasing his subscribers will likely raise the floor for his views of future videos. A more complex example might be using that video as a lead generator for a gofundme.

I haven’t really looked into the economics of this particular niche, but a savvy marketer could turn those views into additional money by using it as a feeder into a sales funnel of some sort.

He should have tried a bikini try on.

And, in any event, it compounds. Views are great, but subscribers are repeat viewers (and juice the algorithm).

So 100k new subscribers could be worth millions of views over a one year period.

> but I just can't fathom someone would do it for the views.

Do have a look at his other video titles. He seems to do a fair bit of unfathomable stuff.

Completely agree. No visible engine restart attempt. Very little time between engine out and bailing out. It's not clear he attempted to pitch for best glide. Complains of no phone service but presumably he could have gotten a call out to ATC while in the air. He could have tried to put in down on the river bed.

It does seem like an expensive way to get monetization.

It does seem like an expensive way to get monetization.

I'm sure he put in an insurance claim . . .

If he did intentionally cut the engine, it might well be obvious from an inspection of the wreckage, so even more reason to go to the wreckage first.

I doubt it. There's no need to do anything detectable to turn off the engine. There are three things he could have flipped to kill the engine, then put back in the same position (mags, fuel valve, mixture). Then, it's unlikely that a crashed airplane is going to be in such good condition you can prove nothing was wrong with it.

I would hazard fuel exhaustion due to the shape of the crash site.

I think that if he put the controls back the engine could have restarted when air drag started turning propeller during steep descent?

Part of checklist for shut down before emergency landing is to close mixture, close throttle, turn off master & magnetos.

So those can be expected to be closed if he done things right in a real emergency too.

I’m curious to see what the investigators will use to debunk this.

You’re right. If you put anything I listed to “off” to kill the engine and put it back to “on”, windmilling would have restarted it.

But, as your sibling comment notes, turning those things to “off” when you can’t restart the engine is normal. So I still doubt the airplane would be conclusive (and really won’t be since he visited it after the crash).

And even if the fuel valve was off and even if you could prove that he turned it off in flight and never turned it on, that alone doesn’t prove it was intentional. People have turned off fuel valves by accident and failed to check them during the engine failure.

One thing that’s misleading about this whole comment section is the skill level assumed in your average Private Pilot. The “pilots are drilled from day one…” is a bit amusing to read as someone who did the drilling for a few years.

But the “seriously, no one wears chutes” are more accurate. That being said, I did just sell a parachute to a pilot who said he wanted it “just in case”, so who knows.

> If you put anything I listed to “off” to kill the engine and put it back to “on”, windmilling would have restarted it.

I cannot speak for the particular airframe / engine / propeller configuration here, but speaking from personal experience (supervised training) one can stop the engine from windmilling on a Cessna 150 Aerobat by pulling the mixture back an slowing down. Once it is stopped, you have to dive quite steeply to start it rotating again.

With regard to parachute-wearing, it is the usual practice for glider pilots, mainly because the desire to fly in rising air tends to lead to flying in close proximity to other gliders.

This is a somewhat ambiguous response, so, for the record, Let me say that this looks suspiciously like a staged crash - as did that Beech Bonanza ditching off Santa Cruz some months ago. Even if Any one thing might be explained, each story is just one such thing after another.

https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/on-video-guy-ditche...

I think it did windmill in the video.

Good point on glider pilots, forgot about them. Friend of a friend used his after a midair. He said he had doubted he’d be able jump if he needed to. But when he saw that long wing folding up towards him, he was out before he knew it.

Frim 1:13 onwards in the video (prior to the pilot bailing out), the propeller is stopped.

he could have put the controls back when he visited the wreckage

Despite other reasons for the circumstance to come under scrutiny, these arguments from pilots or enthusiasts are all so weak. It's an edited video. There is no chronology. There is nothing from us to glean from "a cut to the tail camera". We have no idea how long any of this sequence lasted.

The only one that will know is the FAA if they issue a subpoena and get to see the full footage from all sources, not saying conversation isn't warranted, just pointing out that we don't know if any of this stuff happened or not.

He edited it for what would be interesting, not to appease pilots mentally checking a box.

I agree with you; the other day I watched Moxie Marlinspike's video zine he produced almost 20 years ago ("Hold Fast" [0]), and I was really moved by it. But, I could also throw the same shade of doubt about every aspect that is not shown to question its authenticity. But, alas, sometimes people are living richer, fuller lives with fewer expenses.

[0]: https://vimeo.com/15351476

> this youtuber was trying to get some easy views

I think the word "easy" means something different to you than it does to me. Even staged, I wouldn't call what he did easy. But it certainly seems like a way to get guaranteed views!

He said he had water in the plane but couldn’t find it.

What if it’s a scheme to collect commissions selling wallets?

Noooo. Couldn't be. \s

Can't believe people are even seriously discussing this - the controversy over the fake is exactly the desired outcome.

Right. The reactions to the post, it’s almost like watching a thought process evolving in slow motion. And I think there’s a beautiful robustness here to this socially engineered system, where those wallets still get sold.

Not sure about the US but in Europe I'm pretty sure that would fall under commercial use and not allowed on a PPL.

Of course that would be the least serious infraction if he did it on purpose. Which I agree it has all the hallmarks of.

Yea, I really want a wallet which is advertised with ashes of people. /s

And to this already perfect list, I'll add the subjective:

- terrible acting

That was the main giveaway for me too. Sure there are lots of technical things that give it away, but this man couldn't act to save his life. When he first reached the tree with his parachute, I couldn't help but burst out laughing at his "anger".

Oh man I skipped right over that. Terrible acting and he went for the cliche of getting stuck in a tree. If he's an experienced skydiver, surely he could have easily landed in a better spot.

Bad writing too. If he wanted it to be believable he should have left out the crap about his friend's ashes.

There's also the text at the beginning saying he didn't think he'd have the courage to share the footage, but then he ends up sharing something that he had to have spent a lot of time editing? If it was that traumatic, surely he wouldn't be able to have put that much effort into editing it like that. It's not like all cutting between all those angles was necessary to demonstrate that a parachute is handy.

I don't have the relevant experience to judge one way or the other, but my internal BS meter was definitely going off. Main thing I can say is his reactions to the engine failure and troubles while on the ground didn't seem authentic.

The prepared selfie-stick was a really awful look. I couldn't' believe what I was seeing.

Regardless of how prepared or experienced of sky diver he might be, the notion he'd selfie his way down and look at camera rather than doodoo his pants wondering if he'll live another day and looking for a place to land feels implausible for unplanned emergency excursion.

Particularly telling moments are when he's steering parachute with one finger because others are holding the selfie stick; and the footage when he just landed and is trying to disentangle from bushes - but still prioritizing holding the selfie stick at correct angle. If somebody actually has those priorities in real emergency, dear gawd, I don't want to be near that person!

(other inconsistencies have been well noted in op and in other posts)

Don't forget about the gopro batteries, they only last an hour tops, this guy keeps shooting for several hours. Even if you turn it off in between the shots it's hard to get a full days worth of video, unless you have spares batteries in you pocket, plausible given that he's a youtuber after all.

At the end of the video you can tell he's an experienced skydiver, which could explain how lax he is in the air and with the camera handling, but then why the hell did he crashland into a tree on the side of a cliff when there is a flat field right below him 10 seconds earlier in the video.

And why is he dragging his heavy parachute gear throughout the jungle when he's tired and water deprived?

no one mentioned how he films himself with LIGHTS ON drinking water from the river... If I was lost at night in this kind of bush, I guess I would try to save my battery.

One more thing, play it at 0.25x speed at 4:03 - then frame by frame it (double tap) until you see the hip mounted altimeter - white clock with a red "pie". It's visible for a few frames.. just, gold. (If his left hand has filled the frame you've gone just too far, still at 4:03.)

Sure, a perfectly normal thing for a pilot to wear on a not at all pre-coreographed free fall plane ditch.

Everybody's got questions and suspicions, but here's my rather subtle one: If you're editing dramatic video footage for YouTube, why exclude the exciting moment when the engine suddenly quits? Why edit out the suspense of your repeated attempts to restart the engine? Why omit the drama of your repeated radio calls?

I think if you're a YouTube narcissist, you leave everything in that attracts attention and views. Now of course maybe if your ego is especially fragile, you edit out anything that makes you look bad. (Bad in your own opinion, mind you. There were numerous things left in that make him look bad in my opinion, but I digress.) So maybe he thought he sounded panicky on the radio, and maybe he thought he looked inept trying to restart the engine (or maybe he was too dumb to try either of those), but that still leaves the moment the engine quits - why leave that out?

Now you know what they say about assume: it puts U between me and some ass. Which I don't appreciate. But nonetheless I assume that moment is not shown from the cockpit camera because he killed the engine. And if he killed the engine, he probably never tried to restart it, and never made any radio calls.

It's kind of like when your cell phone is turned off all day, on the same day your spouse happens to get murdered. Nobody can triangulate & prove you were at the crime scene... but.........

I've always heard assume makes and Ass out of U and Me - yours is good too, thank you, imma use it.

Okay, but if he’s faking the video and the most believable video would show the part where the engine stops, then why wouldn’t he include that in the fake video?

Per the comment you're replying to, "...that moment is not shown from the cockpit camera because he killed the engine. And if he killed the engine, he probably never tried to restart it, and never made any radio calls."

When you have an engine failure, don't you think the most exciting, watchable, share-able drama would happen inside the cockpit? He has a camera in the cockpit, but he chose to only show footage from takeoff, cruise, and ditch.

If attempts at recovery, contacting ATC, or searching for a safe landing ever occurred, he chose not to include them. Which is very strange for a person who is clearly editing for drama and virality in the rest of the video. Why didn't he include that footage?

A reasonable suspicion therefore is that he didn't include them because he didn't have any footage of them, because he never tried to restart the engine or call for help, because he wanted the drama of the ditch and crash.

I think you misunderstood the question. The person you are replying to isn't questioning any of the things you mentioned.

Well you're sort of re-stating my point, except in terms of believability instead of interest/drama. In the scenario where he's faking the video, that part is the part that's fake and ruins the believability.

And if he had made radio calls, wouldn't he gave stayed with the plane where they could have found him?

Trivial explanation is that cameras were not running and he started them when he decided to ditch.

I'm a private pilot and I regularly fly aircraft similar to the one in the video. Engines can fail for any number of reasons, but catastrophic engine failure is exceedingly rare, and most of the time an engine stoppage is going to be something that can be corrected easily, such as fuel starvation (maybe failure to switch fuel tanks?), or a misconfigured fuel mixture, or a fried magneto.

As student pilots, we train extensively for engine-out scenarios by running through checklists to increase glide distance, diagnose the problem, and hopefully restart the engine. At the very least, we evaluate all options.

The first thing you are trained to do in an engine-out is to pitch the aircraft for best glide speed, and you don't even see him do that in the video. The prop stops spinning and he immediately opens the door.

Bailing from the aircraft was the first thing he thought of doing, and that is the complete opposite of what every pilot is trained to do. I can't emphasize enough how much the engine-out checklist is drilled into you during training. Any qualified pilot is going to exercise some of those options unless their intention is in fact to bail from the aircraft.

The video is edited, so it's possible that some of those things were cut, but I don't think they actually were.

Yup. As he was explaining all the details for pretty much everything else, I'd also expect him to have him go over the emergency procedures/checklist on the video before bailing out.

>The prop stops spinning and he immediately opens the door.

I'm no pilot (student or otherwise), but as a comment in OP's link points out, his door is cracked open before the engine shuts down.

At 2:35 we see it properly closed (as a layman would expect from someone sitting in a chair in the sky). At 2:37-42 in the establishing shot and the shot of the engine shutting down, it is clearly cracked open. As tho he was peaking out to see the terrain prior to killing his engine, like he does right after in the video.

That alone makes it... suspicious. You'd think he might have spread his friend's ashes just before as an explanation, but considering how he used said ashes as a video prop, I'd expect him to include that shot in if he'd done it. Does a small plane pilot have any reason to open the door other than anticipating a jump?

Than there's the whole parachute thing, which is further notable as you don't see him wearing any in his other flight videos.

It's possible that the engine was out at that point and the prop was just flywheeling. Possible but unlikely as it sounds like the engine is still on in some of the external shots.

> Does a small plane pilot have any reason to open the door other than anticipating a jump?

Additional ventilation, especially in older planes (according to comments on the original article). So that's not a dead giveaway.

The prop doesn't even stop spinning of its own accord - only after he yanks back on the yoke. That's not a standard engine out procedure, I think! Surely he'd want to maintain airspeed to keep it windmilling while troubleshooting.

If you failed to restart the engine and intended to glide some distance it might make sense to stop windmilling the prop since it generates a lot of drag. But it seems to be theatrics here.

That's a fixed-pitch prop, which will generate more drag stopped than windmilling.

This is not true for any plane I've flown -- see discussion at https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/64394/does-a-wi..., although it does seem like there's some variability.

Especially if the engine is still making compression, a windmilling prop is extracting at least enough energy from the free stream to keep not just the prop but the engine turning... this is a lot!

I agree that energy lost to turning the engine must come from the airstream, don't underestimate how much energy can be lost just to creating turbulence in the airstream - after all, that's why you drop like a rock if you do a slip with full flaps. And a stalled windmilling prop will generate less turbulence than a stalled stopped prop.

The discussion at your link makes a good point though - the windmilling prop might not be stalled while a stopped prop certainly is stalled, and a stalled prop obviously creates less drag.

It is surprising that there's no good data on it. Someone with a scientific mindset in a remote location who's good at restarting a stopped engine in flight should run a couple of tests.

> catastrophic engine failure is exceedingly rare

Not really... apparently the rate for piston engines is around 15 failures in 100,000 hours (it's not trivial to find reliable statistics on that, because an engine failure that does not result in an accident need not be reported). If an average GA pilot flies around 1000 hours, encountering an engine failure is as common as throwing a 6 on a die. (I've had one.)

Private pilot here. A lot of people have remarked on the lack of a mayday call. It's not clear whether that plane had a radio. Many aircraft of that type don't.

That said, I see a lot of smoking guns:

1. He doesn't do any of the normal engine-out procedures. In particular, he does not turn the plane. He makes no attempt to try to find a safe landing site, which was pretty clearly available on the dry river bed. The plane he was flying is specifically designed to land in places like that. Even if he wasn't able to land, turning around would have placed him closer to civilization before he bailed out, but he clearly didn't even try.

2. His reaction when the engine quits is very heavy on profanities and lamenting the direness of the situation, and completely devoid of troubleshooting or planning the best course of action. Both of his hands can be seen on the yoke, so he's not trimming for best glide, checking the mags, checking the fuel selector. At best he is a completely incompetent pilot.

3. He is an accomplished skydiver flying a controllable skydiving chute (not an emergency chute). He could have put that chute down wherever he chose, but instead of landing on clear flat terrain (in the riverbed) he chose to land in the brush on the mountainside. That was either the most incredibly stupid decision anyone has ever made in an emergency situation, or part of a deliberate plan. I don't see any other possibilities.

4. The fact that he's able to get a shot of the plane flying below him also looks mighty hinky. He spent a lot of time in free-fall. For the plane to end up underneath him like that would be an incredible coincidence. Indeed, being able to hike to the crash site is mighty suspicious, even leaving aside the highly questionable decision-making required to even attempt it.

[UPDATE]

Also this video [1] where he spends a day at an airport trying to scam a free flight off someone by presenting himself as someone who has never had the opportunity to fly despite the fact that he is himself a pilot. This indicates that it is very much in character for him to try to deceive people for the sake of YT views.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWoEv0t5xGc

> 3. He is an accomplished skydiver flying a controllable skydiving chute (not an emergency chute). He could have put that chute down wherever he chose, but instead of landing on clear flat terrain (in the riverbed) he chose to land in the brush on the mountainside. That was either the most incredibly stupid decision anyone has ever made in an emergency situation, or part of a deliberate plan. I don't see any other possibilities.

Yeah, this one seemed really silly. There is even a large open field at 5:36 pretty close to where he chose to "crash" land. Maybe not completely level, but as you said, many other options.

Could anyone who is a pilot comment on what you're _supposed_ to do if your engine completely goes out? From what I've read so far the answer is "keep trying to get the engine back".

Do you just try and glide it out and land? That's what I would imagine. What even would be the situation where you would bail?

Bailing sounds like more of a military thing to me. _Or_ a fire?

I'm not a pilot, just someone who's been doing flight sims on and off for decades:

Here's a good take on what he could have done - gliding back to those fields clearly visible in the rear right quarter at the time of the "failure".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VXaLiB70glE&feature=youtu.be

Author (not myself) also shows a simulated landing on the riverbeds below - heck, the 1940 Taylorcraft nearly landed there by itself! AFAIK the plane was designed to land off road, with a stall speed barely over 61km/h - it can land on a proverbial dime.

What a waste of a perfectly good aircraft.

Fly. Find. Fix.

1. Fly: Trim the airplane for best glide speed (that is the speed that will let you travel the farthest before hitting the ground), which is a value you should have memorized. And don't forget to keep minding the stick and rudder - any unnecessary turns or aileron/rudder miscoordination costs you energy, and that means less time and less distance.

2. Find: Find the best place to put down the plane, and start maneuvering there. A road. A field. A river bed. Or even an airport; at cruising altitude there's one in gliding distance more often than you might think.

3. Fix: Try to get the engine running again. The engine can fail in a way the pilot is hopeless to get it running again, but more often by adjusting the throttle or mixture you'll be able to get it started again (it might have even been mismanagement of those things that caused it to fail - I accidentally turned the fuel off once).

Note that "call mayday" isn't even on that list. Its not like ATC is going to run out and catch you. While on a cross country VFR flight, you ought to have the radio tuned to a center controller, and have flight following so they know which blip on the radar is you. And if you don't do that, you ought to have the radio tuned to guard (the emergency frequency). And then when the "fix" step isn't working out, I would make a quick "MAYDAY MAYDAY MADAY, Center, $CALLSIGN, has an engine out, one on board, forced landing in a river bed to my east." But many people don't do any of those things. And for most of the airspace out there, you're not even required to have a radio, and planes of that vintage often don't.

And while lots of that video is fishy, I'm not reading much into his lack of communication. If I happened to be an experienced skydiver wearing a parachute, and my radio wasn't already tuned to a frequency where someone would be listening, in a panic I might skip talking to anybody in favor of getting out of the airplane while I still had enough altitude to safely deploy the chute.

> Fly. Find. Fix.

Also known as A, B, C (Airspeed, Best landing field, Checks).

Can add D, E (Declare emergency, prepare Exit).

Could you expand on 4? Are you thinking he deliberately planned the trajectory when he bailed out so he would be able to get footage of the plane beneath him or the footage was manipulated somehow/something else.

I honestly have no idea, which is why I just characterized it as "mighty hinky". To get that shot for real, the plane would have had to somehow catch up with his free-fall descent and circle around to end up underneath him. For an unmanned aircraft to carry out that maneuver seems extremely improbable to me. Even with a pilot at the controls it would have been challenging to pull off. Catching up with a skydiver in freefall is not easy.

As a pilot, this is what it looks like. Altitude is gold in an engine out situation, survival is all about trading altitude for time/airspeed. It makes absolutely no sense to spend time in freefall, its akin to putting an engine out plane into a dive on purpose before pulling into a glide.

he was in freefall for 20ish seconds while the plane was seemingly flying away from him straight and level at ~70 mph losing altitude at a moderate pace. So at the time he popped his chute he was several thousand feet below a plane that was last seen flying away from him. A parachute has a higher sink rate than that plane as well.

Somehow the plane then ends up losing altitude VERY quickly before leveling off again, and by chance circling back directly underneath the pilot in the process. It could theoretically happen, but also seems ridiculous when you put it in context.

Without a radio how would he have gotten clearance at his fields? If there was no radio he'd have to have had at least a portable.

And transponders are also mandatory in any aircraft at least here in Europe. Even gliders or microlights.

But perhaps this works differently in the US I guess.

There are plenty of airstrips in the US and Canada that are both uncontrolled and have no radio requirement. And, transponders are only required in control zones.

But even in Lompoc where he took off? That seems to be a pretty big town. I've even heard of it and I've never been to the US :) Also I see lots of military activity in the area (e.g. Vandenberg AFB). I can't imagine it would not be controlled.

Here uncontrolled fields are also common but you'd still call local traffic. And transponders are always mandatory. But aviation is not as commonplace as in the US.

I regularly fly without any radio.

Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with Lompoc. That looks like class echo airspace in which a radio is not required. Apparently the airport's control tower only operates part time. Still, with nearby population centers, restricted air over military bases, possible gliders and skydivers in the area, even oil wells relatively close, it looks like a particularly foolish place to turn an aircraft into an unguided missile by jumping out of it.

Sources: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-02-2021/PDFs/Los_Angeles.p... which includes a legend, faster version here: https://skyvector.com/?ll=34.665619444,-120.467502778&chart=....

Ok I'm surprised. I don't think anyone here in Europe flies without a radio. If only just to monitor local traffic. Most of the flying club members even carried backup portables. I didn't proceed to my full license so I never did. But I did have lots of ham radios on which I could receive (not transmit) the airband if needed.

Yep, Lompoc is uncontrolled: https://www.airnav.com/airport/KLPC

And notifying local traffic (on CTAF) at uncontrolled airports is recommended, but not required.

This is quite common in the US, especially in small towns/rural areas.

If he took off in Lompoc, and he doesn't have a radio, wouldn't that indicate the radio isn't mandatory for Lompoc?

Also worth noting that in a life-threatening emergency you have wide, wide discretion when it comes to putting her down. Fields, Roads, Riverbed, pretty much anything that's remotely flat is fair game.

It never said whether or not he had a radio AFAIK.

We were just philosophising whether he had one or not.

I remember this dude being another one of those youtube pranksters so doing a dangerous and stupid act for views seems on brand. The FAA won't go easy on him.

He also made a deliberate point of pointing out beforehand that of course he always flies with a parachute. Nope, not suspicious at all.

Martha Lunken lost her pilots license at 78 years old for flying under a bridge. She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a safety manager and ran a flying school for 28 years. This guy is toast.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/04/18/lunken-airp...

> She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a safety manager and ran a flying school for 28 years

Sounds like the FAA correctly decided that she should have known better. Especially given her age, she should have been dotting every i and crossing every t, because everyone knows the FAA comes down like a pile of bricks on elderly pilots.

They do?

They might, but probably not for the reason(s) the GP is implying. I've definitely noticed a correlation between age and how quickly a pilot is to disregard safety, checklists, etc.

> ... worked for the FAA as a safety manager ...

Sounds more like she was a liability.

Sounds on purpose.

The linked article is a little odd to me, this story is kind of famous as she's a bit of a celebrity in the aviation world for her accomplished instruction career. The way I've always heard it is that she was aware that her pilot's certificate was going to be revoked soon anyway due to her advanced age, and so she flew under the bridge well aware that there was a possibility her certificate would be revoked for it. AOPA's article supports this theory, it says that she did fight the revocation but quotes her saying that she knew it would likely happen.

My father used to fly with the RAF - he told me that old pilots who were about to lose their licenses due to age/health used to 'go out with a bang' flying under a bridge rather than quietly aging out of their license. IIRC, Tower Bridge in London was a favorite. This was decades ago, but I'm curious if the motivations were similar here.

I don’t know that it was a favourite, but there was certainly a famous incident in 1968 where a pilot decided to buzz Tower Bridge as a protest against the MoD not recognising the RAF’s 50th anniversary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter_Tower_Bridge_inc...

(My father was also ex-RAF, though his role was to jump out of planes - and teach others how to - rather than fly them)

What a story. Anybody interested in seeing this Alan Pollock, I guess this is him: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_YhGsknrK8Io/SE-QN8bsQDI/AAAAAAAAC...

Holy crap that is an insane story.

Here's the man himself telling the story: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80027439

According to a followup article she'd also turned her ADS-B off before going under the bridge (which is apparently why her license was revoked rather than suspended).

So the hypothesis seems credible at least.

Article says she only lost it for nine months, and has to retake the test if she wants it back.

She knew that would be the result. She can't have not known. Every FAA certificated pilot knows not to do this, with a limited exception for seaplane landings and takeoffs AFAIK. Why is this even an article? I don't know.

(FAA certificated pilot for almost 30 years.)

My dad used a fly a cesna 172 when I was a kid. So I've heard many stories from his pilot friends about losing engines, landing in fields and the like. It happens quite a lot, apparently.

A few things strike me:

o why was he wobbling the yoke so much forwards and backwards, that costs you speed, and knackers your glide efficiency.

o Why wasn't he looking for landing sites (he was up really high, like 2k+ above the mountain top), edit: see comment daughter, decent is measured in feet per minute, unfeathered prop will cause drag, nailing your glide ratio so not 10 minutes glide time before action was needed

o why didn't he set his glide path up properly, to give him time to think?

o why isn't he looking at the checklist for engine failure? (my dad had one in the middle) I suspect he might not have one

o Did he send a distress signal?

o where was the attempt to restart the engine (granted it might not be young enough to have a starter, but he had the height to spin the prop)

Finally, the other thing that gets me, is that the door is open before the engine fails. which either means that he's expecting the failure (checklists are your friend here) so why wasn't he lining up/searching for a river bed for landing?

Sink rate is much higher than 200 fpm engine out (likely 500+ fpm in a T-craft). From 2K AGL, you don't have 10 minutes.

thanks, I have updated.

Yep, almost exactly. Best glide in a t-craft is going to be about 65 mph, give or take. It's a better-than-average glider, and with the prop stopped should be able to get close to 10:1 (although I surely wouldn't plan on it); so vertical speed is about 6.5 mph, or ~575 fpm. If you're optimizing for time in the air (loiter) instead of glide distance you can pull it a bit slower than best glide -- Vx is about 57 mph, which at 10:1 (you'll get a bit less below best glide, but not much less) would be 500 fpm.

o Why did he hike to the crash site to where all the GoPro memory cards were, and where all the flight controls were still set to where they were when he baile---Ooooh.

Yeah. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO.

Can you elaborate on the jail part?

Well, up-front he says he reported the crash. If he said to the FAA / NTSB "I deliberately flew on an empty tank so I could jump out for YouTube views" he's probably only going to lose his license, otherwise it's going to be his liberty.

Pilot here. That aircraft wasn’t built with an electrical system, and people only install them when they need to fly into populated areas— it’s basically an antique. No way to radio anybody, barely any checklists to follow; generally extraordinary simple— just throttle and magnetos, if it’s anything like the Piper Cub… so engine failure is usually due to fuel exhaustion, the more likely case because also there wasn’t a fire near the landing site despite the crumpled metal, or oil leak, unlikely because the prop freewheeled once the plane sped up, or maybe sure the magnetos were turned off. More generally, there’s something off about the person… his emotional connection to his experience does not seem typically expressed.

I grew up flying a homebuilt Taylorcraft. There is no way I would have gotten out of that plane at that altitude. Those things will glide forever and can land on almost nothing. One of the biggest problems they have for new pilots is that they really want to just float and you end up using far more runway than you actually need.

It's possible he's just a new pilot and panicked when the engine went out and would have rather relied on his skill as a skydiver rather than his skill as a pilot. But even the plane looks like it circled and tried to land in the river without him.

Just bad all the way around. At the very least he needs to lose his license.

I watched the video and I'm no expert, but I'll be amazed if this guy didn't crash his plane for views (and maybe insurance fraud). This situation feels like the perfect disaster... almost like a low-budget Man vs Wild. I hope I'm wrong.

Yeah, in the middle of the video I was expecting to see a hand to hand combat with a man in a bear costume.

A tangent, but the movie Hardcore Henry is a first-person perspective action movie in that vein. Once I got over the initial motion sickness it was insanely riveting.

I'm a pilot and a paraglider. I own an emergency chute via my paragliding kit. I fly an experimental plane powered by a much less reliable engine than what this man had. My airframe has had an in air engine failure, and forced landing on a small road, although I wasn't the pilot.

I have never once thought about bringing my reserve parachute with me when piloting my plane. I was trained to land the plane without power, as are all pilots. I don't know any pilots who have had a simple engine out that wish they would have bailed out. I know pilots who are skydivers and they don't wear their chutes.

The ONLY pilots that I know of that wear chutes are aerobatic pilots who do high risk maneuvers. Absolutely none of them wear one that looks like a skydiving rig because it is VERY uncomfortable to be in a cramped cockpit wearing what is essentially a bulky backpack. In the video you can see just how cramped he is in that plane because he has a chute on.

At the dropzone the pilots usually wear emergency bailout parachutes. But yeah you're right, a skydiving rig would be really uncomfortable to wear flying. It looks like he was planning to jump before he ever took off to me. I've never seen anyone pilot an aircraft wearing a skydiving rig.

I recall now that some aircraft types are modified in a way that the FAA requires the pilots to wear a chute. But as you pointed out, they don't wear a full blown skydiving rig.

If you or anyone else ever decides to bring your paragliding reserve onboard an airplane, be sure to check its specs first. Paragliding reserves are optimized for fast deployment at low airspeed, whereas deployment at airplane flight speeds needs a slower deployment sequence to avoid excessive G load on both the parachute and yourself.

For extra safety, getting a whole-airplane ballistic recovery parachute is a much better choice, although those are not foolproof either – installation must be done properly, and deployment is not guaranteed to succeed if your plane is in pieces by the time you need it, e.g. from structural failure or a midair collision.

> I don't know any pilots who have had a simple engine out that wish they would have bailed out.

Survivorship bias?

Maybe. I also don't know anyone who has suffered serious injury or death.

My feeling is just that landing a gliding airplane is just not that hard.

Thank you. All of the comments about full skydiving rig versus emergency chute kind of misses the point. It is extremely unusual to wear any kind of parachute at all when piloting an aircraft (yes, there are exceptions, but they are rare). To have a full skydiving rig is frankly all the evidence I need that he planned to bail out, never mind all of the other issues I have seen mentioned.

This guy sounds like he's fishing for attention, the phrase "I didn't think I would have the courage to share..." is something 10-year-olds think up for attention. It drips vanity and a covered ego the size of the Hindenburg.

Apparently it's working. Since the whole "dream cheated @ minecraft" drama - it's clear that there aren't really any consequences for lying to millions of people and in fact, you might even get your own little fanbase defending you.

The video is sponsored by the way.

Lying to the FAA on other hand does come with consequences.

You picked up the same thing I did. I'm not sure what exactly in this sentence does it, but warning lights in the "this person is lying to me" section of my brain started flashing.

- Crashing an airplane

- Recklessly endangering other people in the area (this was not far from established hiking trails)

- Getting investigated by FAA

All for barely 200k views on YouTube. Wow.

Even hearing the synopsis, I don't even care to watch the video...

But it was all sponsored by ridge wallet, I'm sure that totally paid off. /s

At least not sponsored by RAID SHADOW LEGENDS

His youtube channel really sets the scene...

"I got stuck on a chairlift", "Skydive ends in police car", "A helicopter left me in the ocean", "I Brought My Dog Flying (Bad Idea)"... just on and on.

In the don't bring your dog flying one he starts with "this story may or may not be true", mentions that his gopro coincidentally didn't capture the critical moments, then talks about nearly crashing during takeoff and all his electronics going out and his dog panicking. So of course he alledgedly continued on without navigation into a no-fly zone instead of y'know turning around and landing.

I'm not totally 100% convinced the stuff is all fake, but at the very least he probably shouldn't be flying...

I'd say that if he stays on the same path, we won't need to concerned for much longer. Compounding risks have a way of converging on expected outcomes, over time.

2100 likes & no dislikes, though. Looks like the people have spoken!

Does YouTube show the dislike count anymore?

They don't. And videos like this is exactly why they still should. There is no indication to a casual viewer that this might be BS unless they carefully look at the trend in the comments.

I read the message you replied to as sarcasm btw.

A lot of mistakes were made. The FAA is investigating and I'm sure they will come to a sound conclusion. This is the most I can say, based on the footage I've watched. I cannot speak to his intent.

Anything more is just Internet Pile-On, and the Internet can use less of that.

I don't think it's wrong to talk about this rather than sit in complete silence until the FAA releases a report.

I agree, but the comments are all either “how dare he place an ad in his video (contractual, perhaps?)” to “I would never”

There isn’t much meat on the bone, to a layman at least.

Not in this case. /r/flying put this idiocy on the map.

FAA is an imperfect organization. Check out some of the discussions around pilots masking mental health issues to maintain medical status.

What I’ve heard from a friend is: you should have a really good general practitioner, and a good doctor who certifies you, and they must never, ever communicate with or even be aware of each other.

(I do not study airplane.)

Thank you. People are so full of shit, thinking they can spot anything as being fake.. or knowing his intentions. There just isn't enough information yet.

The FAA/NTSB is pretty good at determining why a plane crashed, not so much on judging people's intentions, that's usually left to a jury.

Private pilot here. Posting this because I haven't the regulation mentioned, and because several folks have made it sound like bailing out of a still-flyable airplane isn't against regulation.

Among the several other regs that the FAA will eventually cite when they pull his ticket (hopefully forever), 14 CFR 91.119 paragraph (a) is compelling here IMHO. (asterisks around my emphasis):

§ 91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.

Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:

(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing *without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface*.

He was above a safe altitude while operating the airplane though, and not operating it when it was below a safe altitude.

In order for that argument to make sense, you'd have to make the logical leap that jumping out of the perfectly flyable airplane ceases his responsibility for operating the aircraft. That doesn't seem reasonable, and I doubt any judge would think so...

AFAIK as PIC you are still responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft even if you bail out of it.

Yep, absolutely 100%.

I couldn't stand to watch more than a couple minutes of this video. There are several clear landing areas within gliding distance, and in such gorgeous conditions he could probably could have hooked a couple thermals in such a light plane.

This was a setup for YouTube, and he deserves whatever the FAA throws at him.

Oddly enough, I'm familiar with the wilderness where the plane crashed and based on the video am pretty confident I know where the crash site was. Am now interested in hiking out to it sometime too.

In the case that this was real, it is interesting to me to see just how close he was to trails and camps without knowing it where he might have been able to better assess his situation and get his bearings.

It boggles my mind why he recommends a parachute but no offline maps on the phone.

Still I think this entire thing is staged

Shortly after the engine went off you could see roads from the plane…

Is that Hurricane Deck underneath when he bails? Haven't been up there for a while.

Yeah, hurricane deck trail looks like maybe .25mi uphill away from where the plane ends up.

Access would be tough in general, plus there is a road closure right now making the trek even longer.

That aircraft could land on a driveway, much less the miles of dirt roads visible all around.

Seriously. Your average dirt road is probably comparable to some of the runways it used to fly off when it was new.

The FAA/NTSB investigates basically every crash, they do a good job. I doubt they will react kindly to crashing on purpose for views.

> The FAA/NTSB investigates basically every crash

No. The NTSB investigates significant accidents (either commercial operations or passengers involved.)

There's an average of 400 GA accidents per year, so about one a day.

If two CFIs climb into a Piper and crash, it probably won't be investigated. Add a passenger, then the NTSB gets interested.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

The NTSB website says:

"The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent Federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States and significant accidents in other modes of transportation – railroad, highway, marine and pipeline."

So if the NTSB is not investigating every civil aviation crash, then they are failing in their congressional mandate. If you have evidence of this, you should probably contact your congress person or a newspaper with the details.

I wonder how they define a "civil aviation accident"? In places like Alaska, people routinely land at sites which are not airports. If someone has a hard landing, there could be some damage to the aircraft with no injuries. Do they investigate every one of those? It might be there are a lot of minor "accidents" that fall into grey areas. I don't know if that's the case, I'm actually curious if anyone knows.

That sounds like an incident, not an accident. They are treated differently.

> [1] Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.

Substantial damage is then defined as:

> Substantial damage means damage or failure which adversely affects the structural strength, performance, or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and which would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component. Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered substantial damage for the purpose of this part.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2

Accident, Incident and Serious Incident have explicit definitions in civil aviation, and are also graded internally and thus might have different scope of investigation.

A planned landing in terrain, if it caused no injuries but caused enough damage to aircraft to prevent takeoff without repair, would be classified as accident, but its investigation might be very brief depending on the event in question.

Essentially if you have an "occurence", you're required to report it to NTSB, which in turn will grade it and decide if you need even a cursory interview.

Not quite correct. You have to report any accident and any of a specific list of serious incidents to the NTSB. You do not have to report other incidents or occurrences.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.5

Also note: a landing that required repairs would not necessarily be an accident either, assuming no serious injuries occurred. "Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered “substantial damage” for the purpose of this part." (Those minor damages, even if they made the airplane require repairs prior to further flight, are not enough to make that landing an accident.)

Well, I'm going off more ICAO rules than NTSB specific - what I know for sure is that the differences you just specified are prerogative of NTSB and its parent govt to hash out (and seen it being decided upon in Polish PKBWL)

"§ 830.2

Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage. "

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2

Later on the same page you can see how they define "substantial damage" and "civil aircraft" too.

In most countries, depending on severity of the event, the agency responsible for crash investigation can delegate investigation of the event to another entity.

Mind you, this is usually done for incidents, not accidents. However, sometimes an accident is clearly due to illegal operation, and sometimes that means that a) matter is passed directly to prosecution b) investigation is closed without conclusion due to explicit disregard of safety mechanisms, thus making further investigation useless to the purpose of aircraft accident investigation (under common rules from ICAO that NTSB also operates when it comes to aircraft)

Not every aircraft crash is an aircraft accident.

The definition of an aircraft accident is a matter of federal law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2

An aircraft crash where the aircraft suffers minor damage and no one is seriously injured is, by definition, not an aircraft accident, but rather an incident. (This incident is definitely an aircraft accident, of course, whether or not it was accidental. :) )

There is prior art for non-accidental plane crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoxaJTzPu4

Thanks for the clarification of terminology. "Crash" is indeed a bit ambiguous as a layman's term (though I would personally argue that incidents that cause minimal damage are generally not considered crashes.) Indeed, I think there are even many accidents that don't rise to the level of what I consider a crash (such as when my dad's friend bent a prop by briefy tipping his plane onto its nose when landing on a gravel bar to pickup a load of the moose they had killed. While they did fly it out by cutting/sanding all the prop blades to match and reducing weight, it would seem to easily match the definition of "significant damage" but I still wouldn't call it a crash.)

I believe the claims made by the GP are still clearly wrong, given that they do use the term "accident" and stipulate criteria for investigation that (commercial or passengers) that have no basis in the definition your provided or the NTSB's mandate.

> While they did fly it out by cutting/sanding all the prop blades to match and reducing weight, it would seem to easily match the definition of "significant damage"

Probably not (assuming you're trying to determine reporting requirements and figuring out if it's substantial damage). It's specifically excluded: "ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered “substantial damage” for the purpose of this part." The NTSB doesn't want to be bothered everytime a prop makes ground contact, hits a runway light, a towbar, etc. It happens a lot.

Yeah, parent commenter has no experience in any aviation matters. I've been in a "crash" (off runway excursion, no injuries, no damage save a slightly bent landing gear door flap.)

The "investigation" consisted of the airport director speaking with the PIC and passenger (me.) His sole question to me was "were you operating the aircraft?"

There are a lot of stories of pretty terrible decisions made by GA pilots and little/nothing happening from the FAA. And then do stupid shit like going after Bob Hoover's license because he was too old for their tastes.

The details are nuanced by the definitions in the CFR, the details of the reporting requirements (NTSB must do something with everything reported to it but that may be minimal), and the NTSB's authority to delegate more minor investigations to FAA flight standards. Lots of people in the thread are hashing these out. But it suffices to say that when an airplane is seriously damaged or people are seriously injured, the NTSB is obligated to investigate. This dates way back to before the NTSB existed. In straightforward situations that sometimes consists only of the regional office making some phone calls and then preparing a two-page summary (you see a LOT of these two-page summaries for GA incidents, it's basically a form letter), but that's under the assumption that their cursory review doesn't turn up anything interesting. You can already find this incident in the NTSB's investigation database, WPR22LA049.

Repeated “oh my gosh” and “oh my godsh“ came off as the biggest fakey red flags here. Clear sign it was a performance; he was more worried about offending some sensitive people than he was actually stressed out.

youtube demonetizes videos that use language that advertisers do not wish to be associated with.

so, arguably less about offending viewers and more about keeping the advertising revenues flowing

Which would totally be my focus if I was actually experiencing an in flight emergency as a pilot

He has plenty of places where he bleeps himself, so I don't think this really counts for much. I do this type of thing often myself, saying "whoops", or "Martha Faulker" even when no one is around.

Really looking forward to commentary from Mentour and blancolirio on this. Judging from Mentour’s comment on the video I think it’s an understatement to say that he thinks it is correct for the FAA to investigate...

Just wanna chime in and say that Mentour has been doing a great job with his videos.

There is a lot of low effort air crash videos on YouTube that does not do much more than reading off the official report or the script of an ACI episode. Mentour is one of the few that goes beyond that by injecting actual professional insight into the events.

I actually emailed this to blancolirio and ask him to cover it. He's a great commentator.

Also "Probable Cause: Dan Gryder"

He can be a little harsh on people but usually for good reason.

I only watched about the first half of the video, but I understand there is controversy whether this was an accident or a planned wreck. If so, I think there is an easy answer, he should just release the footage of when the engine started to fail. There should be a good chunk of time where he is trying to restart, should also be genuine surprise when that happened and not a shot of him shutting the engine down. The youtube video (or at least the first half) didn't include that, only cut to a point where he has obviously decided to jump. He may claim to have turned off the gopro on the dash, but there was a gopro on the left wing that was focused on the cockpit that should show his reaction.

Came here to say this. Pilots are drilled to work an extensive engine-out checklist during training.

In this situation, the pilot had what seemed like a significant amount of altitude (time) to work the problem.

So, I’m a complete ignorant when it comes to planes, but I do have the habit of giving folks BOTD and so I was wondering a few things:

1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very junior novice or experienced such that this should be a non-factor.

2. I see lots of folks mentioned hardwares in the comments - would a vintage craft (80+ years) be lacking good maintenance or equipment?

All in all I think he needs to release full footage otherwise he isn’t actually helping anyone as he claims to hope to. At the same time I see lots of armchair quarterbacking on what should have happened - but having been in high stress situations (fist, knife, and gun fights) in my life your reactions are never what you expect from the comfort of a computer chair. I’ve also witnessed as a software engineer very “senior” folks with loss of experience make amateur choices in no-stress situations - I cannot imagine the “oh shit this plane is going down” stress.

Wish someone would have a good layman explanation instead of showing off their personal knowledge.

> 1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very junior novice or experienced such that this should be a non-factor.

Shouldn't matter. By the time the FAA examiner gives you a pilot's license, they should be convinced that you can safely handle aviation, to include engine failures.

But unless the airplane is literally coming apart around you, bailing out of a light airplane is almost always the wrong answer. They land fairly slow, especially an old T-craft, and it doesn't take very many feet of deceleration room for it to be something you walk away from.

I'm not familiar with the particular accident and circumstances, but nothing I've seen in the avweb writeup makes it look very good. And I generally suspect YouTube "pilots" are mostly in it for the views, and nothing sells views like a crash.

As far as "the engine has quit" stress, as long as the rest of the airplane is in good shape, it's still a perfectly good airplane. And pilots regularly train (at least, should...) for engine out landings. It's a common event in training - you get somewhere near the airport, the instructor pulls the throttle back and says, "Your engine quit." I hate to say it's not a big deal, because if it quits for real, you'll certainly be sweating, but a general aviation airplane doesn't fall out of the sky if the engine quits.

>> you get somewhere near the airport, the instructor pulls the throttle back and says, "Your engine quit."

The first time mine did this was on downwind in the pattern. I looked forward at lots of farmland and said "how about there?" He pointed left and said "you got a perfectly good runway over there." I said "oh you really want me to do this, I better make my turn." IIRC I made the landing but not really near the numbers :-)

If it quits for real, you do NOT know you are sweating until you land. At least not in my two. For me, it felt like time slowed down and everything was crystal clear, like a yellow brick road appeared in my vision. OTOH, I fly a twin...

No need to sweat. Just carry a skydiving parachute.

Not everyone reacts the same to crisis though. I can imagine other people totally freaking out and not having razor focus like you. And your don't really know what type of person you are until you're in it.

But it's sure a great thing to have!

The giveaway for me is the camera mounted to his wrist. Why would you have that on the wrist, it makes no sense if the flight had gone "as planned".

I guess the question to what is, is this featured in other videos of his? If not, very bad look.

Thanks to Ridge Wallet being the sponsor.

Don't forget that.

N29508 if anyone is interested.

NTSB investigation number - WPR22LA049

Yeah, and does he wear a full, regular skydiving rig (not an emergency backup rig) while flying airplanes in his other videos?

I have not watched them, but commenters in the original article have said that he does not wear skydiving rigs while flying other airplanes. (I haven't watched his other videos and can't personally confirm or deny)

not even mounted on the wrist. If you watch the video he switches hands, so its on a selfie stick.

Dude bailed out in an 'emergency' but remembered to grab his selfie stick and press record.

For foreigners like me that are not so initialism-savvy, "BOTD" stands for "Benefit of the Doubt".

> 1. How experienced a pilot is this man? Is he a very junior novice or experienced such that this should be a non-factor.

he has a pilot license and that is enough experience to get out of this without bailing on the plane. the fact that he had a full proper skydiving rig was a red flag.

> 2. I see lots of folks mentioned hardwares in the comments - would a vintage craft (80+ years) be lacking good maintenance or equipment?

every plane has to undergo some form of periodic maintenance and 80 year old planes are worthy if kept up. it's a single engine plane though and those do fail from time to time, however they do have practice in engine failures as part of the path to getting the pilot license. these things can glide for a long long way and he had a lot of altitude to find a place to land such as a road or dirt. this was imo a stunt for his youtube page.

If you have a pilot's license, which this man did, then you have been extensively trained on these things. Getting a pilot's license is not easy.

As someone who has also been training for his own pilot's license, and has practiced engine-out situations while flying, his reactions look suspect. First of all, he has considerable altitude and could likely fly to a safe forced landing location. Second, he doesn't bank at all to provide better visibility into landing options. Third, we don't see him trying to restart the engine at all.

(Unless this airplane is somehow so old that it doesn't have one) – all airplanes come with a quick reaction checklist which you keep right next at you, and are ready to pull out at a moment's notice. It provides instructions on exactly what to do in situations like an engine failure. From what I can see, I don't see him attempting to recover the engine. It would be poor airmanship to bail from the aircraft without at least running through the engine failure checklist.

I'll let the FAA do their job before drawing any final conclusions but my impression as a student pilot is that this was planned and staged.

Most light aircraft like the kind that he's flying have a glide slope of something like 1:6 with no power: meaning that you can travel quite a long distance with the altitude that he has in the video.

Lastly, I will remark on comments made in the article itself. He is not wearing an emergency bail-out skydiving rig. He is wearing a full, redundant skydiving rig (the kind that come with two parachutes). This is highly unusual as full skydiving rigs are bulky and would be uncomfortable to wear in the cockpit of an airplane. Emergency bail-out rigs are considerably thinner since they are meant as actual backup systems.

The guy's focus looking out the door, rather than focusing on flying the plane and looking for a landing spot (he has tons of altitude and potential to get to plenty of viably safe ones), gives me the impression that he's already made the decision to skydive out of the plane.

Someone may have radio recordings. If we know the tail number of the aircraft (people were working it out in the article comments) then it may be possible to find the radar tracks showing the craft's last known location. If Internet sleuths want to dig in, then you can from there find the radio frequency that he'd be expected to be on, and if he's even attempting to make this seem like a real accident you'd hear him declare an emergency on the radio. Furthermore, if Air Traffic Control had a radar track on him, then they may have been able to guide him to a safe landing location given his altitude and knowledge of the aircraft's "best glide".

To me it's highly suspicious that he's not showing any of the video angle of the cockpit interior, including what he should be/is doing to recover the aircraft and look for safe forced landing sites.

All of this.

My dad had a PPL (uk single engine pilots license). The checklist was on the dash, it was easy to understand.

Even though I haven't flown with him since I was ten, I still vaguely remember what things you should generally do:

1) adjust trim for best glide

2) attempt restarts

3) find the best landing site, go to 2

Registration is N29508

1: A lot of failures could be attributed to someone forgetting their training due to stress... but he didn't seem under that much stress and evidently forgot all of his training. That's pretty suspect. You shouldn't be able to get a certificate without showing that slow to best glide, start looking for a landing site, and start the engine out checklist is a set of steps that you can conduct quickly from memory. It should be trained into pilots to do this kind of thing out loud (e.g. pointing and narrating) because the instructor and examiner want to see it that way and it just helps you keep on track and concentrating. That makes it odd that, if any of this happened, he omitted it from the video... from a vanity perspective it's an opportunity to Look Like A Real Pilot by working your list in an authoritative voice (I'm pretty sure every pilot gets a kick out of saying Landing Assured, otherwise they haven't found out how fun it is yet).

Of course we can't totally tell from the video but it really doesn't seem like he took any of these actions prior to bailing out, certainly we don't see him with a checklist. Bailing out isn't even really something that's discussed as an option in an engine-out scenario, it would have to be such an unusual situation for it to be the best choice and it will tend to endanger anyone/anything on the ground (and of course it's a goal of aviation not to do that). One thing that is explicitly trained for any kind of precautionary (e.g. "this might go poorly") landing is opening the door, because in the past doors have jammed in the frame and prevented the pilot escaping a fire. That's why a lot of people are calling it out as suspect that he has his door open a bit from the very start... like he already worked some kind of precautionary landing checklist. Forward-hinged doors are also hard to open in flight because of the air pressure on them (that's kind of a feature), so one also wonders if he had tested to make sure he could get it open enough to fall out.

It's hard to believe that someone with a certificate wouldn't at least promptly fumble for the checklist, and I bet inexperienced pilots would probably be inclined to make a radio call earlier than experienced ones did since it takes some discipline to keep your priorities on aviate, navigate, communicate when things go wrong. Yet we never see him make a radio call at all, which is very odd since he expresses concern about having a way out of the mountains... I personally suspect that he knew that a mayday call would probably result in a fire brigade or sheriff's deputies or state police helicopter or whatever showing up before he had much time to address the crash site (controllers activate local fire and search and rescue as a precaution when they hear a plane might go down in the wilderness and it didn't look like he was that far from civilization). That could easily lead to questions and discovery of evidence that would become a problem for him later, so I think it was an intentional decision to avoid having authorities notified in real-time. This is a cynical take obviously but it feels like he was preserving his ability to tamper with the incident site before anyone showed up who would know to preserve it for investigators.

2: I mean it's hard to say about some random airplane, obviously it's a very old aircraft but most of the critical parts will have been outright replaced much more recently than it was made. The FAA has requirements to keep an aircraft in use and they involve regular inspections and preventative maintenance, so older planes don't tend to fall out of the sky just because they're old. There are ways to skirt these rules but not a lot of them, and if it's found that he did (or the owner did or whatever) he will really get the book thrown at him just on that front. For the most part if an airplane is still registered to fly it's in as good of mechanical condition as any other plane, although sometimes older aircraft will get relegated to basically experimental status because of missing safety features (which puts in place restrictions like not flying over cities). The Taylorcraft he was in is certified as a standard aircraft though, nothing weird going on, except that I think it might fall into the grandfather sport pilot rules that allow certain standard aircraft to be called "light sport" if they meet the requirements but were certified as standard because the light sport class didn't exist yet at the time. That raises the question of whether Jacob had a sport pilot license or not since that program gets some criticism from a safety front, but from searching the airman registry it looks like he has a regular private certificate issued about a year and a half ago, on a third-class medical from 2018 which suggests maybe he started and stopped training but isn't super unusual.

Also what YouTuber in their right mind leaves the part where they say "mayday mayday mayday" out of the video. It's just like the movies! If we believe that he worked the steps and just edited them out, it's a really bizarre creative decision for him to make. Hard for me to believe.

> Also what YouTuber in their right mind leaves the part where they say "mayday mayday mayday" out of the video. It's just like the movies! If we believe that he worked the steps and just edited them out, it's a really bizarre creative decision for him to make. Hard for me to believe.

That is also weird if the whole thing is staged. So it's not really evidence for or against.

I still have a crystal clear memory of the time I was out in the practice area with my flight instructor and had what appeared to be a legitimate engine failure. I was all set to land in a stubble field and about 200' agl my instructor reached down and flipped the fuel selector from off to both. Never forgot that step in the checklist since. Learned several valuable lessons that day - practice til you don't miss anything . . . and keep an eye on your instructor :-)

Ballsy instructor to leave it that long. :)

Possibly - pretty sure it wasn't the first time he'd done that. In the same practice area was a dirt runway in a farmers field that we'd use for rough field landing practice - usually meant cleaning the cow crap from the undersides of the wings. Worst that would have happened - rough field landing in stubble.

> Never forgot that step in the checklist since

I thought the whole point of checklists was that individual steps should not have to be remembered.

E.g. every doctor and nurse knows how to put in a catheter. Yet explicit checklists save lives.

If you have to remember the individual steps, it sounds like you are not using a checklist? Aren't they printed somewhere?

Some checklists include memory items - things that ought to be done immediately, without delay caused by looking up a checklist. An engine failure scenario is one where you don't want to spend time getting out the checklist.

For the engine checks, you develop a flow from one area of the cockpit to the other, basically touching everything related to the engine. For a Cessna 172 you'd check fuel selector valve, alternate air intake, fuel shutoff valve, throttle, mixture, carb heat (if equipped), engine instruments, ignition switch, magnetos, fuel pump (if equipped).

Also ... who is his friend Johnny that died ... is there an obit ... a facebook or instragram page of johnny's that shows a long history of using those apps and that he passed. Are there any pics of him with this johnny on those apps?

Cursory Googling gives:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Strange_(adventurer)

The pilot mentions snowboarding and such, seems plausible it was this man. Then again he’s a California extreme sports type so might just well be some commonly named punker friend. In that world “Johnny $FAKE_NAME” is a trope.

The guy you linked to died in 2015. I guess you could be holding onto his ashes that long...but HA

Seems correct based on this video from 7 months ago stating he died in 2015:

https://youtu.be/1n4kFN-1axs

The door went from closed to open before the engine went out. I'm not saying that's proof it was a stunt, but it sure is strange.

"Open the door" is not on the engine out checklist, its on the forced landing checklist, which comes after all engine restart options are exhausted. He didn't run any items on the engine-out checklist. He went straight to skydiving.

I don't think any pilot that managed to pass their checkride would neglect running a single diagnostic or attempted restart checklist item. This had to be intentional.

Yes, my point though is that the door was opened before the engine went out.

It might've been on his "before you have an engine out" checklist.

Its on his "get YouTube views" checklist

> "Please fly with a parachute"

Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?

(As someone who doesn't fly, it's obviously an interesting thought experiment as a means to survive, but I would imagine most pilots are going to be looking to recover or land the aircraft, not bail out of it?)

For some small airplanes (I think every one by Cirrus), they actually have a parachute for the entire aircraft

I don't think it's normal for the overwhelming majority of pilots who fly single engine propeller planes. The Cirrus is very much an exception. Given the older ages of many people who are private pilots, they probably shouldn't be parachuting regardless.

No. Glider [sailplane] pilots routinely do, but only because of their habit of soaring together in thermals, and the increased risk of a mid-air collision. Larger and much newer (i.e. more expensive) general aviation aircraft sometimes have a "ballistic recovery system" fitted where the whole aircraft has a parachute -- Cirrus a/c are famous for this. Other than that, pilots dropping skydivers use them. And in some jurisdictions, aerobatics. And that's it.

General aviation is about as safe as riding a motorbike. You're trained to not get into that situation in the first place -- it's a very fishy video for many different reasons. We plan for eventualities! Pilots assume that everything _will_ fail and ideally don't let themselves get into a position where a parachute is needed. I've been in a glider (ASK-21) under tow from a tug plane (a Piper Pawnee) where it lost an engine cylinder at exactly "the worst point" on the way up. The pilot waved us off immediately, and we both executed our well-practiced "eventualities" plan for that airfield, with no incident whatsoever. An investigation showed that the engine casing on the Pawnee had cracked, despite recent inspection.

They're required when performing aerobatics, or if you plan to open the door in flight. (e.g. pilots of skydiving planes need to wear one, even though they plan to land with the plane)

But bail-out rigs are much smaller than normal skydiving rigs; the latter would be uncomfortable to wear while operating the plane. A bail-out rig is thinner, shaped more like a seat cushion, and contains only a single parachute, often a non-steerable round (which can reliably open much lower).

Example of typical bail-out rig: https://www.summitparachutesystems.com/pilot-emergency-back-...

> (e.g. pilots of skydiving planes need to wear one, even though they plan to land with the plane)

This is not true. I've watched numerous youtube videos of pilots flying skydivers and I've never seen them wearing a parachute. Flight Chops, for example. The pilot in question in the videos was chief instructor for a flight safety training company.

I thought this was required by the FAA advisory circular governing parachute operations (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/... - PDF), but after just looking, I now think it was part of the supplemental type certificate (https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/stc/) or 337 approval for the door modifications on the planes at the drop zone where I used to work.

Thus, it probably depends on the aircraft, and possibly the process by which the owner got FAA approval to modify the door.

I've been a skydiver for many years and as far as I know the FAA _does_ require the pilot to wear a bail out rig. Most skydiving pilots I know do wear them, but I have come across some pilots not wearing them in flight (even though their bail out rig was in the plane next to them).

Flight Chops is based in Canada, so anytime he's flying up here he'll fall under Transport Canada and Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs). There are no legal requirements in Canada for pilots to wear parachutes.

> Do pilots of small aircraft consider this in practice?

No. Not unless it's required (doing aerobatics work requires it, which is rather more likely to overstress the aircraft than regular mostly straight and level flying).

Small airplanes just don't fall apart in flight (exceptions like the Piper wing spar in training duty are just that - exceptions, and typically lead to a lot of exception requirements). They only come apart if you've already screwed up a lot - usually lost control flying into a cloud without an instrument rating and ended up in a graveyard spiral (nose down, steep bank, you either hit the ground at speed or pull the wings off first, and then hit the ground at speed).

I know a lot of GA pilots. I know none who fly with parachutes.

Things like the Cirrus airframe chute are interesting, and have saved some people, but Cirrus seems to attract a large number of people who outfly their skill level and get themselves into a lot of trouble. Sometimes the parachute helps, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.

General wisdom is that once the engine quits, the airframe is the insurance company's problem. However, an awful lot of the time, the pilot is able to perform a safe off-airport landing with minimal or no damage to the aircraft. You can safely land on roads, in fields, in random desert, etc, and walk away with a perfectly usable airplane. A typical single engine GA aircraft only lands at about 50mph. It really doesn't take much distance to get down and, if not stopped, at least slow enough that you don't really hurt yourself or the airframe if you go off the end of [whatever].

It amazes me how many pilots I see on here when the topic comes up. Is it because this site is just popular enough to have a mix of everyone or is there some true demographic overlap here?

Both. A lot of people are on HN. There's also a big demographic overlap between pilots and HN readers. So, lots of pilots on HN. Source: pilot turned software engineer in San Francisco.

I would assume there's a decent overlap between tech types/programmers/etc and pilots. They have the money for it (GA is not as expensive as most people think, but neither is it cheap), and they have the whole attention to detail/"The more gauges the better!" attitudes that tend to work well with flying.

There also seems to be a pretty good overlap between motorcycle riders and pilots. Find a middle aged man riding 10k+ miles/yr on a BMW or similar, and there's a very good chance he's a pilot too.

CAPS (the Cirrus parachute system) has a pretty impressive record. One of the ways Cirrus actually improved crash survivability for their aircraft was training pilots to start by assuming they're going to pull the chute. Might they be able to perform a successful engine-out landing? Yes. Might they be able to restart the engine? Also yes. But, by starting with the mindset "Plane failed, pull the chute" you don't fixate on these ideas past the point where the chute ceases to be available, so when that engine won't start, and you realise you can't find that long straight road you'd always imagined landing on, you still have enough altitude to pull the CAPS handle and live to make better choices another day.

On their Vision Jets they also have emergency autoland, which is a blessing under FAA conditions where realistically some elderly pilots are going to die up there, leaving anybody else in the plane to get down on their own. Is it possible to talk a zero experience lay person down in a single engine plane when their pilot buddy slumped over suddenly in level flight? I wouldn't bet money on them even operating the radio correctly. But the emergency autoland can put that plane back on the ground pretty reliably, maybe even in time for the pilot to receive medical attention if they're merely incapacitated not yet dead.

I was doing a video shoot of a group of sky divers, but I was not getting out of the plane. I don't know the exact make/model of plane, but it was small. I was provided a parachute. I was told it was required by regulations that all in the plane needed one. The only training I was provided was a pointing to a handle on a chest strap and the phrase "if you find yourself outside of the airplane, this is the only thing you will want to be concerned".

I did not enquire about what subsection of the regulations made this requirement or any of the qualifications of equipment. The pilot did have a parachute on as well.

> I did not enquire about what subsection of the regulations made this requirement or any of the qualifications of equipment.

I'm glad it turned out okay. Personally, I've learned over time that plenty of people will sacrifice my safety or financial risk for their convenience. Now I'm rarely satisfied by them saying "Don't worry, it will be fine. Everyone does is this way." I'm glad that I've learned to stick up for myself under that kind of pressure.

Literally never (former flight instructor). I have no idea how to operate a parachute. Not required knowledge!

Occasionally a student pilot will inadvertently get into stall/spin (only allowed at a proper altitude) during stall training. The value of the student getting into the stall spin, and flight instructor calmly saying "what are you going to do?" is way higher than a parachute. Low altitude stall/spins are essentially not recoverable (in time) and you die. A parachute won't help you, you're not getting out of the plane soon enough. And a parachute as a fallback for proper stall/spin recovery technique to me is idiotic. Don't get in a stall spin low to the ground, and if you have the altitude you recover. Either you can't parachute out or you don't need to. That's the bottom line.

Further, my confidence getting out of the plane with a parachute on is essentially zero. Whereas I know I can recover from a stall/spin. In fact, normally trimmed, most planes have positive static and dynamic stability, and will recover from a stall spin on their own if you just relax back pressure on the yoke. Which I'd have to do to parachute away from the plane. So hilariously, by jumping from the plane, the plane has a very good chance of recovering on its own, obviating the need to jump.

Now for aerobatics training, it's different because plausibly you could stress the airplane enough to break it. At which point it might be uncontrollable enough you'd need to parachute out to survive. And flight over hazardous terrain is another plausible scenario although I'd argue that's just plain bad flight planning. WTF are you doing planning a flight where you can't glide to a road? I've done quite a lot of mountain flying and it's not difficult to plane this, at least in the lower 48. In Alaska and Canada, I'm sure there's a bit of a chuckle the idea of being in gliding distance of a road or some flat enough surface.

But for the other 95% of flights going on, you're not considering a parachute. No. I've never worn one.

> *I'm sure there's a bit of a chuckle the idea of being in gliding distance of a road or some flat enough surface*

So I just saw a video on YouTube which analyzed an incident of a plane outbound from Aspen which was flown into the ground. I'm sure if the terrain were about 6000 ft lower it would not have been considered hazardous. They simply failed to get high enough to go over the pass, and when they tried to turn around and give up they hit the ground. So the point is, they couldn't fly under power safely back to the airport, gliding wasn't a factor.

https://youtu.be/8PBUVMCbmFQ

The mantra of mountain flying, "altitude is your friend".

You can't fight physics. Normally aspirated planes are seriously underpowered at high altitude. It's shocking. And they don't have much excess power to start with.

This pilot made a fatal mistake much earlier than the actual accident by not becoming deeply uncomfortable at the low altitude perniciously taking away all options. He assumed the rate of climb would get them over the pass. A small tailwind makes this even worse as it reduces the time you gave for climb.

Every time I fly in the mountains I see planes well below my altitude, thousands of feet. I've slowly build up a store of power and thus choices, including more time to troubleshoot, more time to announce position which is a line of sight transmission.

I just watched the video. AOPA puts out great stuff. Everything they say here is spot on.

It's not simple failure to get high enough. That was not the fatal mistake. It's multiple mistakes, the accumulation of which results in no more choices. Poor flight planning, possibly an inhibition of an ATP to ask "lower ranked" local pilots about various routes, and waiting too long to abort. They lacked an abort plan. They could not have been asking "what do I do right now if the powerplant fails?" Because they not only accepted going passed the point of managing a powerplant failure, to the point where they had no options even with a fully operating powerplant. There was nothing wrong with that airplane. It was all errors in judgement that lead to no choice but a crash.

Having flown in and out of Aspen many times myself, I have never used Independence pass. I've opted for the down valley northwest route for climb out, then north, and finally east to Corona/Rollins pass. Many choices before, during, and after pass crossing. A local pilot would have given alternatives to Independence, and their reasoning. A local flight instructor would have reminded them about density altitude, leaning, and even the option of not taking off fully fueled in order to improve climb performance, and fully fuel on the other side of the mountain range instead.

Colorado sees this same lack of awareness of the effects of altitude with hikers all the time too. Folks from New York and Florida and California, regularly climb 14ers in fall and unwittingly get stuck in snow storms while Denver is clear as a bell, having no imagination at all for treachery. And their families are appalled when the search and rescue is called off because it's even too treacherous for S&R operations. Happens every year.

So hilariously, by jumping from the plane, the plane has a very good chance of recovering on its own, obviating the need to jump

That reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

In almost 30 years of flying light aircraft here in the US, I have worn a parachute only when obliged to - during aerobatic flights. (Technically required only if you are not alone.) And the one time I intentionally skydived.

So, it seems odd to me.

A YouTube video in this genre where there is a little questionmark whether it's real or not, is unfortunately almost always fake. How is it possible that you jump from a plane, descent at least for 5 to 10 seconds, deploy parachute and then make a shot of the airplane 1000 feet below, who made a full 360 turn, but during the shot flying straight, at almost the same altitude as where the engine problems started.

So many people are suspicious that he has so many cameras and footage. Maybe that’s because he’s a YouTuber and documenting a flight was his exact purpose.

There are many reasons to doubt this, but cameras aren’t one.

Going directly to the crash site to collect footage seems suspicious though.

I know this is extremely narrow but I think there's something in it: the way he says "I'm over the mountains and I have a [fricking] engine out" sets off my Spidey sense.

This appears to justify the need to jump before pointing out the problem. That's not your reaction in an emergency. If you're making YouTube content then surely you want to show the sheer terror that you faced, not the calm justification for your bailing out.

The problem is that your engine is out. Your response is supposed to be "[Frick], my engine is out and I can't see anywhere to land - this is concerning". Not "I'm over the mountains and my engine is out" suggesting that there is only one outcome.

I don't know much about aviation, but his language and attitude throughout the video suggests to me that he's prepped to ditch the plane. I'm running off gut instinct here but it's always served me pretty well.

Browsing this guys YouTube video titles reads like a decent into madness… culminating in “I crashed my plane”.

As a skydiver, I think I noticed some stuff from the video that looks pretty fishy. Why is he flying with a skydiving rig on? Normally pilots where emergency parachutes with only one parachute which are made to be worn comfortably while flying. He's wearing a skydiving rig in the video which would be very uncomfortable to wear while flying an aircraft. I could be wrong, but that sort of makes it look like he was planning to jump before he ever took off.

I mean, he literally says that he immediately reported the crash to the FAA and NTSB at the beginning of the video.

It's certainly both fascinating and terrifying to watch, but wouldn't the FAA investigate, regardless of whether or not the crash was "controversial", whatever that actually means in the context of this incident (disclaimer: not a pilot)?

Also, isn't the "controversy" here basically a bunch of armchair critics/commenters?

They should arrest him for littering.

HN will feed more clicks, even in good faith to question this video. The company behind that stupid wallet thing he's promoting is probably happy, at least for now. And GOOG won't pull this, at least for now. Fact checkers? lol

What a f'd up online world.

EDIT: oh, and it was NordicTrack that bought the ad before I could watch the video.

If anyone's interested in watching videos of genuine emergencies in light aircraft, Elliot Seguin (https://www.youtube.com/c/utopiasnow) has some fantastic ones.

This might be off topic, but can you really just spread human remains willy-nilly like that?

I know people do it, but from what I understand, you're not supposed to. Sure, it may "just be ashes", but it's human remains nonetheless.

We cremated my late father in law here in California, and first we wanted to spread his ashes at sea, then we thought we wanted to have them interred, then we thought maybe we'd hold onto them. Every time we changed our minds we had to update our permit for human remains.

While I think we can all probably agree that spreading a handful of ashes in the wilderness is not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, legally speaking, would you want to publicize that?

Reminds me of the David Lesh incident:

https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/on-video-guy-ditche...

I love the obviously disconnected fuel line with the fuel selector valve bobbing around in plain view. As a pilot, this guy did nothing pilot-like in response to the engine out, even making an effort to get the engine to STOP turning over by intentionally reducing airspeed to near stall. There were suitable landing strips within range at his altitude if you look at the map( the view of the river pinpoints his location). Also, he was going paragliding but did not bring his paragliding gear? Not his plane either, he left his plane at the airport he picked this one up at?

This was an intentional act 110%.

The FAA will pull his ticket. He’s an idiot. Hopefully there’s insurance involved so he can go to jail too.

Someone on youtube also pointed out that the day this occurred just so happens to be the 50th anniversary of DB Cooper's jump (November 24, 1971). For some reason I don't think that's a coincidence.

This reminds me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RF9UVwWM9E

does anybody know how that ended, and if it turned out it was staged?

This whole discussion reminds me of Reddit's imfamous /r/findbostonbombers. Humans seem to have this need to find and punish cheaters (see for example some of the experiments by Cosmides and Tooby). Sometimes we get things wrong.

(we did it HN! Take that lamestrean media)

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4f340r/where_...

This is the location above which he jumped: https://goo.gl/maps/jjqRoC4pyCzNYXDN8. You can match the landscape features with the video here: https://youtu.be/vbYszLNZxhM?t=251.

He doesn't show it on the video (coincidence, of course!), but he could easily have glided ~5 miles south-west to some wineries.

Don’t think it was staged, but I could see him making questionable decisions. He seems to put very little effort into finding a spot to land. That’s probably because he had the shoot

The original on YouTube credits Ridge wallets as a sponsor (complete with referral link spam), so that's one company I'm never patronizing.

i am not a pilot but i am a skydiver so i am not going to comment on what he did/didn't do to keep the plane in the air. i watched the video and the one thing that makes it slightly more believable for me is the headset still on in (part of) freefall. it could easily cause problems on opening, and wouldn't be too suspicious to remove it if you were getting out planned or unplanned.

Even if it is staged/fake... he only got 200k views out of it, so it wouldn't have even been worth the cost of the plane

Insurance.

but if it's an insurance scam why bother filming it? Surely the investigation/evidence risk isn't worth 200k views?

If you think you’re good enough to fool 200k YouTube detectives, I imagine you think you’re good enough to get it past the average insurance adjuster.

I think this guy’s risk-reward calculations are probably off by a few standard deviations.

Did he even own the plane?

The airplane is registered with the FAA under someone else's name.

For some people, notoriety/fame is more important than money. Now he has a one-up story for parties. Instead of a rich nobody, now he's someone who survived a plane crash.

Might want to check his other videos. Some have millions of views.

Only about 240,000 views. I wonder if he still thinks it's worth the fine / loss of pilot's license / jail time for reckless endangerment.

Also, a selfie stick, really? He might as well have had a camera crew filming his little stunt.

I don’t see any tail number on the aircraft for identification.

There is no fire which means likely no fuel. Could have been the reason for the engine failure but could also indicate planned activity.

Who knows? The FAA will find out, they don’t fuck around.

For comparison, here is a video of a YAK-50 with an engine failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrR8pnMgMiE

I’m curious who is the person who supposedly shot footage of the plane from a distance as it was heading towards its crash. If he was in the air in the parachute, who was filming the plane from the ground?

Do you have a timestamp for which part you're referring to? It looked like it was entirely recorded by GoPros attached to the air frame, the camera on his selfie-stick, or the GoPro on his wrist.

I think I misinterpreted that part of the footage and the sister comment explains it.

I suspect it's from the selfie-stick gopro and cropped with subject tracking

Most pilots would run a checklist for an engine out situation. Maybe the video skipped over this because it's not raw footage, but it does seem a bit suspicious.

Personally I was sad when I read that the airplane was made in 1939. To survive all that time just to be wrecked for views, so wasteful.

~2000 upvotes on the video, no way there is anything wrong with its content. Thank YouTube for providing such a great UI. /s

YT really pays more out for a video with 250k views than the cost of that sweet vintage plane?!?

No, they don't. A rule of thumb I've seen is about $4/1000 views. Not sure about the brand sponsors though.

Seems like a stunt on MTVs Jackass.

If he doesn't post the full unedited videos, then he's probably hiding something.

The real question is, do you think “Ridge Wallet” will continue to sponsor him?

People who do stupid things like this for attention really piss me off.

His body has a blurred outline around it as he exits the plane.

I don't think I could make a faker video if I tried.

No fire = no fuel? Easy way to have an engine failure

So... did the ridge wallet survive?

Is it just me or he speaks of flying with a parachute in just like many vegans talking about being vegans?

The tone is so similar

he resembles that youtuber who was dumped by the love of his life...

https://youtu.be/0zpVfyEw6nU

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:

> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The individual seems to have decent skills at YouTube'ing and probably paragliding, but most of the video seems easily explained by him simply being a stupid pilot. Let me spin an alternative narrative and you compare it to the narrative of malicious intent to see whether one is more obviously true than the other.

Amateur pilot YouTuber has invested money in several GoPros. Costs him nothing to mount them all over the airplane for some cool footage on the way. The engine stops midflight. The pilot tries a few things (cut from the video so he doesn't look incompetent to his subscribers), but he hasn't flown in a while and has forgotten what he's supposed to do in this scenario.

"Was there an acronym? ABC: abort, blame, no that's not it. GLO: Glide, Land, Observe?" The tiny plane has no radio so he can't phone a friend for help. Could he land on that stream bed down there? Possibly...

"Dammit, I might be skilled enough to land this, but I have spent a gajillion hours live-streaming my skydives recently and THAT I definitely know how to do."

Pilot grabs the GoPro off the dashboard just like he did on his last 10 skydives and jumps out of the plane. In his panicked state of mind, he doesn't realise that he should pull the chute ASAP and he falls back on his skydiving experience and freefalls for a decent amount of time before thinking to pull the chute.

Like the terrible pilot he is, he didn't spend much time looking at the route of his flight plans and he doesn't know where he is. He has a bag of gear in the plane, so he follows the plane to where it crashes in hopes of getting his water bottle, even though it means he has to land in the brambles. Unsurprisingly, he can't locate his gear but he's able to escape with only some scratches. He barely escaped a death caused by his stupidity, but maybe he can salvage this difficult situation with a well edited YouTube video...

Now some of you might say that this is a just-so story crafted to spin a particular narrative, but how is that different from all the other stories here portraying him as a well-trained pilot and ascribing all sorts of other characteristics to him?

Honestly I won't be surprised whichever direction the FAA investigation comes back, but I am surprised at how certain all the "skeptics" here are of the facts they're able to extract from such a heavily edited video.

Biggest guilty before proven innocent aspect: He's a Youtuber.

take the tiktok plane crash challenge !

why is this interesting to official agencies? because stuff insurance payout? i mean it's his plane. why care? why the response on YouTube?

It is completely reckless to ditch an aircraft if other options are available. The chances are low, but it could have hit someone or caused a fire.

why would he do it intentionally, though. isn't an airplane more expensive then what he can expect to earn with that clip on YouTube?

He probably has insurance on the aircraft, so the YouTube earnings + increased publicity + insurance payout could make such a stunt profitable.

I don't know what a youtube video earns, but it is entirely possible to find a clapped out old taylorcraft or equivalent for $10-15k.

I think that breaking even is entirely impossible. WHistlinDiesel destroyed an almost identical airplane in a video...

Yes, but he only endangered his crew, thankfully.

People really out here writing articles on Christmas

TikTok is a cancer to society ... you see so many staged.. mean things pulled on innocent people either working.. shopping at a store, pranks, etc that i loathe most of it. Reels is the same and both pay creators for content like Youtube does.

All such people should be made an example of get huge fines or do jail time for creating fake content that harms others for their financial gain or in this instance forces the FAA to spend money on investigation only to find it was staged.

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