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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

> [...]this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated[...]

If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional?

They'd almost certainly have revoked his license to ever fly again, but filming everything you're doing isn't illegal.

Nor is wearing a parachute because you know you're a crappy pilot that'll bail out at the first sign of trouble.

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General Aviation airplanes require an annual inspection (from an IA A&P mechanic -- that's airframe & powerplant with inspection authorization). My understanding is that the plane was out of annual (ie, bought as parts) and he fixed it up enough to fly. There are strict limits on what repairs you can do yourself without involving a licensed A&P mechanic. FAA actually does ramp checks on occasion to verify that your bug smasher has up to date registration and annual inspection. Regardless of how the flight ended, the flight shouldn't have happened in the first place and his PPL could be revoked for that alone.

> There are strict limits on what repairs you can do yourself without involving a licensed A&P mechanic.

Sure, you're right that this plane was clearly violating a myriad of maintenance violations. But maintenance violations aren't going to get you thrown in jail. They might get your license taken away and would definitely yield some fines, but not thrown in jail.

I am assuming of course this is on a personal GA plane (like the youtuber was using to fly himself). Skipping maintenance and/or doing it himself would have gotten him a few relatively small fines. He probably wouldn't have lost his license and certainly wouldn't have been thrown in jail for these.

Of course the rules would change significantly if this was a charter plane like Part 135, then things are more serious. He would have lost his license then, and maybe gotten some jailtime. Skipping or fraudulent maintenance on a part 121 (scheduled commercial airlines like United or Delta) would certainly yield jailtime.

Edit: this is wrong as pointed out below.

FAA doesn’t mess around with the maintenance regulations. If I remember correctly the A&P knowledge test requirement was to answer 99% of questions correctly, compared to something like 75% for a PPL (I might be way off but there was a large difference).

You're way off. Comically so. A&P passing grade is more like 70%. It's not a comparable figure to PPL ground school.

You’re right, but I’m wondering where my confusion comes from. I’m absolutely positive something required a much higher %. Maybe a different license or regs changed in the last decade or so?

I thought I remembered something like this— maybe it's a higher question count or lower time limit for e.g. commercial?

The FAA testing matrix seems to suggest all are 70% as of now[0]

[0] https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-09/testing_matr...

Getting strong Mandela Effect vibes now… can’t find anything other than 70%, now or a decade ago. But I’m virtually certain I didn’t make something like this up :)

Are you thinking of ATPL (ATP in America I believe)?

Yes, he’ll certainly face punishment. But I don’t think he’ll go to prison (or perhaps a suspended sentence) if he cooperated.

Nice reply. For other readers, I needed to Google these terms:

IA: Inspection Authorized

A&P: Airframe & Powerplant

> If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional?

In a normal setting, probably not. General-aviation aircraft don't have flight recorders. Helpfully for the investigators, however, this numpty decked his plane out in cameras. And then posted the video online. After he'd executed the cover-up.

It was pretty blatantly obvious from just the video.

The engine didn't just stop producing power, that would leave typically the propeller spinning, windmilling in the air. (unless the engine seized, but he was faking fuel starvation)

He put a bunch of effort into making sure the propeller actually stopped spinning, I think he had to actually reduce speed; Just so that your average YouTube viewer could clearly see the engine had stopped.

My understanding reading the original incident report, to my recollection, was that there was enough there that random grossly negligent youtuber trying to get clicks for an ad + a dozen cameras + parachute + not following safety protocol + not giving enough time of trying to restart before immediately bailing meant the beyond reasonable doubt conclusion would almost certainly be that this was premeditated.

Probably, because he was stupid enough to record a video with cameras in the plane. But there’s plenty of ways to achieve it which could pass as accidental:

Accidentally lean mixture (e.g., grab the wrong control). Set to use an empty fuel tank. Set the fuel valve to off or in between settings. With some preparation, destroy a spark plug or two, only enable those spark plugs in the air - extreme misfires will be obvious on video.

There are plenty of pilots who wear chutes (and there are special chutes which basically replace your seat) but he also had a fire extinguisher strapped to his leg which is not a normal occurrence.

Applying a bit of abduction, I see two narratives that track:

1. Some other illicit activity was going on in or around that plane.

2. The pilot thought he could make the whole mess go away by erasing physical evidence of the crash; his reasoning might be along the lines of "no evidence, no feds".

I find both equally credible. I'm stumped.

Never overestimate the intelligence of someone willing to jump out of a moving plane for clicks and views.

Never underestimate the propensity of a criminal to engage in multiple crimes.

I maintain it could go either way.

>If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional?

Isn't that what the black box is for?

The tech in that airplane is much closer to a 1935 tractor than it is to even a 1985 passenger car (which also didn’t have anything like a black box).

It's very unlikely that a private aircraft this small would have a 'black box' (either of the cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder variety). That said, the pilot in this case had incriminating evidence on board due to his own recording devices.

Yes, because nothing in the plane caused a loss of power.

And even if it did, he made no effort to resolve the issue.

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