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If you skip the penalties in a case like this, you encourage people to do the very things your regulations exist to prevent if they think they it probably won’t harm anyone.
You’re not allowed to deliberately crash a plane without telling the FAA. You’re certainly not allowed to do it into random public land. You’re not allowed to send a plane out of control deliberately.
Those are incredibly dangerous things to do.
If you do those things and are lucky enough not to start a wildfire or kill anyone then there still have to be consequences.
And if you try to avoid those consequences then that needs to be punished too.
The consequences here should be a fine and loss of pilots license. Jail time isn't even a discussion here.
Every action done here is completely orthogonal to fire risk and completely independent of the fire risk of the region.
Under your logic Making an illegal campfire is much much more of a crime here. And this logic makes more sense to me.
Again to reiterate my point. It's rare.
It won't go there for the judge, it's too hypothetical. Likely gross negligence at worst without specifying details of a fire. The fire is just a hypothetical for discussion here.
You get how that’s worse, right?
Your "time wasted" is not significant at all. Perhaps I should be sent to jail for wasting your time with this reply.