Taken from youtube comments:
> For anyone wondering why the FAA yanked his license.
1) attached multiple cameras to the craft (not illegal but suspect)
2) Wearing a sports parachute (there uncomfortable as hell and he never wore any chute on any other flight)
3) opened the side door before claiming any engine failure.
4) made no attempt to restart engine
5) made no attempt to find a safe landing spot even though there were multiple landing areas in easy gliding distance
6) jumped out of the plan with a selfie stick which is not normal behaviour during a crisis .
7) Made his way to the wreck and took all the cameras
8) had the wreck disposed of before contact the authorities .
9) made no attempt to communicate on emergency frequency
None of which deals with the fact he had fire extinguishers strapped to his legs since that not technically illegal or the deliberate crashing of his plane into national reserve.
Another pilot also said that they strongly recommended he do some specific maintenance on the plane before attempting to fly it to his purported destination, and that Jacob repeatedly told him not to worry about it.
The other pilot even offered to tail him but was rebuffed, with Jacob reportedly saying "if something goes wrong I'll just jump out".
> they strongly recommended he do some specific maintenance on the plane before attempting to fly it to his purported destination […]
> […] Jacob reportedly saying "if something goes wrong I'll just jump out"
Not to defend the guy or anything but this is interesting. Maybe in his mind the plane was due for scrapping, and his plan was to fly it until failure and then jump out. Still a bad thing to do of course, and could cause fires or could kill someone, etc, but this sort of makes it conceivable how he himself may have thought that what he was doing was not so bad.
That's even worse. In that version, the crash is still planned but the conditions are not. If so, he's lucky he didn't kill anyone.
It's very evident that he thought what he was doing (including covering up his offense) was no big deal. This is exactly why he deserves to have the book thrown at him.
> in his mind the plane was due for scrapping, and his plan was to fly it until failure and then jump out
That is plausible, but also illegal. It would be a violation of multiple FARs to fly a plane that you knew to be non-airworthy with the intent of having it fail.
> 8) had the wreck disposed of before contact the authorities .
Not just disposed, but disposed in multiple locations:
> two weeks after the drama he and a friend winched the wreckage out of the forest with a helicopter, [...] Over the next few days, he cut up the plane into small pieces, and dumped the parts in trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport. [...] In a plea agreement, Jacob admitted he had intended to obstruct federal authorities when he disposed of the wreckage
>8) had the wreck disposed of before contact the authorities
Worse, he reported the incident to the FAA, who asked him for the location and told him not to disturb the wreck (they told him more than once). He then disposed of the plane and continued telling the FAA/NTSB he didn't know where it was.
Honestly I could kinda see going "Oh shit gotta bail! might as well grab my selfie stick that's within reach", but the whole sum of "could happen but not very likely" definitely points to the whole thing being on purpose.
It's funny how if you are a major corporation with fat government contracts you can systematically destroy your engineering department, ostracize whistleblowers, and wind up killing hundreds of people and nobody gets punished and the FAA will even be on your side, like the Boeing thing.
but if you make a youtube stunt that hurts nobody you can get 20 years in prison and the FAA acts like you besmirched the stellar reputation of the aviation industry.
In an organisation which is connected to the government in many ways through partnerships and contracts, putting a face to a crime is much harder to do. There's no single accountable person who can be thrown under the bus.
It was more a collection of bad actions by actors that had their own motives but nothing that was ever explicitly mean to hurt people.
> There's no single accountable person who can be thrown under the bus.
There is: the CEO. This is the person put in charge to run the business against their principles [0]. This is the charter, set by the business, in how it should be run.
When the company fails to execute and people die because of these failures this is a systemic problem that is rooted within the control of a CEO. Nothing major happens in aviation without a lot of checks and balances. Boeing settled because the CEO lied. He should have gone to jail. Instead he was allowed to pay no social penalty and is making money and avoiding taxes [1].
Dennis Muilenburg killed people. He had the position to stop it. Yet he chose profits over the value of others lives. Dennis Muilenburg should be spending the remainder of his life behind bars or subject to fly in a 737 Max with the flawed MCAS that he said was safe for the rest of his life for any and all air travel.
This is a strange take. So what if it is more effort. I remember as a member of my cooperatives board, I was reading a lot of what-ifs. One was that if spikes of ice fell down and killed someone on the street, and it happened because of neglilence on the boards side, we would absolutely be under the gun.
The board should be responsible. You don't get to make $200m a year and just brush hundreds of lives off as a whoops.
If you're going to make an example of capitalism in particular then you should be able to justify it with non-capitalist examples. Are there some socialist or feudal states where the more powerful would lose a case like this?
If you punish the CEO for every illegal thing done in a corporation (often without their knowledge), then no wise person would want to be CEO. In order to function, large companies would have to make the CEO position largely ceremonial and appoint desperate risk-takers, and do the actual executive leadership somewhere else.
So a strict rule like that risks setting up a formal scapegoat situation which could then lead to the opposite effect.
Absolutely, the demand for 7 to 9 figure a year jobs that are contingent upon building a functional auditing and compliance org and not openly breaking law would completely evaporate.
I mean we have no lawyer or doctors for the same reason.
I totally agree. I think if we got better at holding organizations liable for their failure they would be a stronger incentive for them to weight responsible behavior more appropriately.
I think this would be greatly improve our society.
There are names that can be found. While not everyone can be fairly thrown under the bus certain names can be found and those people can be blamed. Who approved the design? Who signed off on the inspection? There is a signature that points to at least one guilty party.
Doing this sets a precedent and an example that prevents people from frivolously permitting things that are unsafe if there is a risk you'll be thrown in jail.
The actual result was mere chance. He took zero precautions against hurting anyone beyond being over a remote area. Nothing to prevent wildfire (which would hurt a lot more than just people). The location of the crash was pure random chance.
Moreover, it is not ONLY for doing the stupid stunt, it is for deliberately obstructing, in multiple ways, the federal investigation. Plus, he hasn't been sentenced for 20 years, that is merely the maximum available sentence, highlighted for clickbait.
I'm only disappointed it took this long to get consequences for this outrageous BS stunt. And I'm all for risky things, just not being dishonest about it and endangering people who have no involvement or interest.
And yes, Boeing should ALSO be far more harshly punished for the deliberate 787MAX design flaws (but it looks like they didn't compound it by lying to investigators).
I’m not sure I understand the last statement. Are you saying they should have one sensor, or three? The problem wasn’t two sensors - that’s normal redundancy. The problem was that MCAS was only tied in with one of the AOA sensors, and wasn’t aware when there was a disagreement in readings from the two sensors.
Three obviously - one would provide no redundancy, and having two with different readings would be bad as well since it would be unclear which provides a correct value
Technically it's not the difference, the possible 20 years is actually from deliberately obstructing a federal investigation.
Incidentally, I don't know if deliberately crashing a plane is a criminal act in and of itself, because planes occasionally get crashed as part of safety studies. So it seems that the offense in the actual plane crash is that he traded others' safety for his own profit, rather than the crash per se. But that is very similar to Boeing.
There is nothing similar between this guy and Boeing. Boeing hid development issues and cheated (oversimplified) with certification. They tried to blame other parties, pilots and airlines, for those life losses. That is despicable. But they did not intentionally crash a plane, and try to hide it. They did not intentionally build an unsafe aircraft with the goal of killing people.
That guy planned a plane crash for social media likes, and tried to cover it up. Actively.
Those two cases are nothing a like, not even remotely.
Boeing (with the collusion of the FAA) deliberately withheld information about the capabilities of MCAS, even after it was discovered that the original concept was insufficiently powerful to achieve the intended purpose. There was no intention to cause harm, but all reasonable and expected prudence was completely subordinated to maintaining profit margins. Something similar could, of course, be said of this joker.
Not going into details of aircraft certification, I am only loosly involved there, but the FAA and the EASA actually allow certifies manufacturers to do a lot of the certification work on aithorities behalf. Calling that collusion is plain ignorant.
He didn't get 20 years, that's just the maximum permitted penalty for the crime he committed. The article title cites it as clickbait.
It's rather irritating. The law was made with a flexible range of punishments to permit the judge of any particular case to use discretion when determining an appropriate punishment. The maximum permitted is thus rather high. So now every article written about the subject lazily cites "up to 20 years", and thus everyone reading those articles gets the impression that he's actually likely to get 20 years for this incident.
Yes it is better to say "he can be sentence to no more than 20 years if found guilty". The 20 years is just a limitation on the court's discretion: hindering a federal investigation is never so bad that a person should be sentenced to life in prison or death or a 32 year term. But it might bad enough that 16 weeks or 30 months or 19 years is appropriate depending on specific facts.
And when the court does sentence a person for a certain offense, it should compare the specific facts of the case to the worst possible case, the one that would warrant 20 years, and if this is somewhat less than the worst possible case, then to sentence them to an appropriately shorter term.
The maximum permitted should be zero years. Any jail time for this dumb stunt is overboard. There just needs to be a huge ass fine and revocation of pilots license.
I point my car at a wall and drive into it on purpose for views... And suddenly that's a possibility of jail time? That's crazy.
There needs to be a minimum number of permitted years when death is involved with clear negligence. Sadly there isn't any our court systems use max permitted years to pick and choose who they can punish. Dumb kid who crashes his plane on purpose versus safety inspector who Actually killed hundreds of people?
This is an utterly bizarre take. Just because he didn't hurt anyone doesn't mean he couldn't have. He could have started a wildfire, his plane could have crashed into hikers, he could have hurt himself and required a publicly funded rescue effort. It's like you're trying to argue that we shouldn't have rule of law??? This kind of prosecution is in place to create a disincentive to doing things that could threaten life, public property, etc.
And anyway, fines only penalize poor people. Someone who can afford to AIRLIFT A PLANE and disassemble it would not be disincentivized by a fine.
Should someone who runs a car into an empty wall be charged with jail time? No.
It's not bizarre at all. The bizarre part here is your stringing of logic to try to transform this into a crime related to murder.
First off he crashed the plane deliberately into empty forest. There's no hikers in the place he crashed it, he knows that.
Second small planes or cars don't explode in a ball of flames when they crash. That's just movie magic. What actually happens is the car or plane becomes metal debris. That's it. A fire and a crashed car or small plane are completely orthogonal concepts. Might as well arrest people who make bouncing balls because the bouncing ball might accidentally smack the trigger of a gun and kill someone.
What's bizarre here is your post says I'm trying to completely eliminate rule of law when I never said that. Why lie straight to my face? What's the point? It's bizarre. You're the one twisting the rationale to fit your convenient narrative. Please be more logical with your reasoning.
The punishment should fit the crime. A huge fine and revoke the pilots license. That's it. Ruining his life with jail time does not fit the crime at all. If he's rich, then increase the fine... that simple.
There could be people … can start a fire … your wall will not.
Also whilst there can be mitigated circumstance you cannot argued for 0 max. There is a crime, there could be danger … 0 max meant anyone officially can do this without consequences?
There are plenty of other consequences to levy besides incarceration. One aspect of his punishment might be to force him to produce several PSAs about the dangers of wagging the dog on his youtube account.
Or you could waste the opportunity and throw the dude in jail, almost ensuring he's never a productive member of society again. That's the norm in the "land of the free"[1]
No thats just Hollywood. In general a crashed car or small plane crumbles on impact. It doesn't explode in a ball of fire. A forest fire is very unlikely here.
When you point your car at a wall and drive into that wall you ALSO cannot argue for 0 max danger of death for an innocent bystander.
But the probability of a person dying is so low we know there is no danger for murder or death at all. It's just really stupid.
Of course there needs to be consequences. A loss of pilots license and a huge ass fine. Jail time is crazy. You know how jail will ruin a person's entire life right? Even a month of jail time is in certain ways hangs on your record like a life sentence. It's too much.
You seem awfully hung up on the Hollywood effects being overblown. Yes, this is true and no one is arguing against it. However, even a small spark can start a forest fire. Thinking you're safe just because there is no explosion is wildly irresponsible.
Anyone who intensionally crashes a huge hunk of metal into pubic land, causing a significant hazard, and exposing the public to stupid risks for "views" absolutely deserves significant jail-time
>Anyone who intensionally crashes a huge hunk of metal into pubic land, causing a significant hazard, and exposing the public to stupid risks for "views" absolutely deserves significant jail-time
No people who slaughters others through deliberate negligence deserve jail time. That includes FAA and boeing employees who violated clear rules.
A person who does stupid shit with no intention of killing people and put no one at risk and ended up not killing anybody should be punished for doing stupid shit. Jail time which is huge is reserved for actual criminals, who actively and have Already harmed people.
>You seem awfully hung up on the Hollywood effects being overblown. Yes, this is true and no one is arguing against it. However, even a small spark can start a forest fire.
I'm hung up on it because the likelihood of this happening is in Actuality overblown. It's not fire season yet and CA just came out of a drenching torrent of rain.
When you get out of a plane that’s still flying you stop having any say in where that plane goes. How certain was he of where it might land? What if he misjudged and the plane had kept going much further than he expected? He had nudged it into a dive… but then he got out, changing the center of gravity of the plane - how did he know that wouldn’t trim the plane’s nose up and send it gliding off well beyond his target?
All good points, except he deliberately crashed it at a specific location. He carried out an action with intention and that intention was fulfilled. You're going into hypotheticals about a possible mistake.
I mean when you drive a car everyday you could make a mistake too. It's too fuzzy to go in this direction.
Right, but as a society we have taken the position that we don’t trust people to correctly aim unguided gliding missiles at safe bits of ground. We therefore require pilots to not get out of their plane mid flight. Even if this guy got his calculations right, we don’t hand out licenses to people that say ‘we trust you to do that safely’.
This is not an unreasonable regulatory burden impinging on individual freedom.
>Right, but as a society we have taken the position that we don’t trust people to correctly aim unguided gliding missiles at safe bits of ground. We therefore require pilots to not get out of their plane mid flight. Even if this guy got his calculations right, we don’t hand out licenses to people that say ‘we trust you to do that safely’.
Agreed and we should punish these people accordingly with fines and suspension of license. We should not classify these people as potential murderers and put them in jail.
Where did you get the idea that jail is for murderers exclusively? You can turn this around as much as you like, but as a matter of fact, and as parent described, he did something willingly that could have killed people or destroyed property. That they did that in a remote location doesn’t change a thing about that, that means our legal system works.
Where did you get the idea that I said jail is exclusively for murderers? I didn't say that. You should read.
You going to drive has extremely high risk of killing somebody. Traffic accidents are some of the highest causes of death in the country.
What I'm saying is what he did carries equivalent risk of killing to driving. He aimed the plane at a spot devoid of people and crashed it. Is there risk? Technically yes, but it's technical to the point where it stops making sense to consider it.
He absolutely did not crash it "in a specific" location. At best he crashed it in a wide area and put people's lives at risk. It might be a small risk but it's absolutely not his call to make. He's basically saying "there's a chance you might die but that's a risk I'm willing to take". For the sake of a few video clicks.
I don't know if you're just trolling or are completely stupid, but that might be a distinction without a difference.
>It might be a small risk but it's absolutely not his call to make.
Traffic accidents is one of the largest causes of death in this country. When you drive you make the same call.
He aimed his plane at a specific location 100%. This is obvious because he deliberately chose not to crash in a highly populated area. He chose an area that is largely unpopulated. This is easy to choose if you know your location and you just look out the window.
>I don't know if you're just trolling or are completely stupid, but that might be a distinction without a difference.
Clever way to call someone stupid. Please be mature enough to have a civil discussion. Neither of us is stupid but possibly one of us does not have the maturity or self control not to call someone stupid. Please act like an adult or go somewhere else where antics like this are welcomed.
Think about it. I point my car at an area devoid of people and drive towards that area then jump out of the car. Is there a slight risk of the car still hitting someone? Technically yes but it's so miniscule it's stupid to consider. Am I murderer? no.
I do the same thing with a plane. Am I murderer? No.
One thing that's making me scratch my head is you realize people have eyes right? They can see out of a window and they can see if a wide area below or in front of them is populated.
Repeating a bad analogy over and over again doesn't make it any more true. He absolutely didn't "aim at his plane at a specific location". At best his plane was aimed somewhere in several square kilometers that could have been occupied by hikers, campers, park rangers and other people.
The fact that the personna played by this account doesn't understand that makes it either stupid or disingenuous.
Either way I'm no longer treating it as an entity worthy of dialogue with.
you can’t have rules where it’s okay to break them if nobody gets hurt. You can’t have investigative agencies where it’s okay to lie and obstruct them so long as there was no harm done.
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.
A wild fire has a slim chance of happening and so does a death of a bystander when you crash a plane into unpopulated forest. The danger is so minimal here that what he did is clearly will not lead to accidental injury or deaths of others. It's Just stupid, like a person who road rages and rams into a parked car, unoccupied car.
The consequences here should be a fine and loss of pilots license. Jail time isn't even a discussion here.
This idea that crashed cars or small planes explode in a ball of fire is from Hollywood. When a car or small plane crashes it just crumbles into hunks of metal debris. It has no relationship to the concept of fire starting.
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.
“Your honor my actions only had a 1 in 25 chance of causing a wildfire” is not a great defense in a state where in recent memory wildfires have destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed hundreds of people. We’ll see how that one plays out.
I live in that state, and the actual numbers compared with the actual people living in that state unfortunately trivializes the events. More people die in car accidents so it's not like it's a huge tragedy that's on everyone's' minds. It may be if you are affected or close to people who are, but in general it's not top of mind.
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.
The consequences might have been a fine and a loss of pilots license. Except he tried to avoid those consequences by concealing the facts and lying to the investigators. He wanted to do the dumb thing and get away with it.
We all are. Pests like this are a drain on our entire government and society. How many hours have been wasted on this stupid stunt that was entirely his doing for no reason at all. He then tried to cover it up and lied about it. He wasted our time this morning reading about it again because he is a selfish liar.
If he makes an insurance claim, that sounds like insurance fraud. That is a very real crime with a victim. Did that happen and why isn't that the headline?
If you intentionally light a building on fire with the potential to kill a bunch of people and destroy a bunch of property, how much lesser should the arson sentence be if someone puts the fire out quickly, preventing loss of life?
No this is Hollywood making you think that. Car crashes and small plane crashes result in metal debris, not exploding balls of fire like Hollywood likes to depict.
In general the concept of starting a fire and a crashing small plane are orthogonal concepts. What happened with that plane is not arson at all.
You seem pretty hung up on this "exploding balls of fire" thing while ignoring that he's crashing a gas-powered vehicle, likely rupturing its fuel tanks and supply lines in close proximity to hot exhaust metal.
You don't need "exploding balls of fire" to create a disaster.
> Wildfire frequency is an increasing concern in the San Rafael Wilderness. Over the past fifty years, three wildfires have together burned nearly the entire wilderness area, beginning with the 1966 Wellman Fire, the 1993 Marre Fire, the 2007 Zaca Fire, and the 2009 La Brea Fire. Overly-frequent fire in chaparral can permanently alter the ecosystem, depleting the seed bank and making it prone to invasions of non-native weeds.
> Small-airplane fires have killed at least 600 people since 1993, burning them alive or suffocating them after crashes and hard landings that the passengers and pilots had initially survived, a USA TODAY investigation shows. The victims who died from fatal burns or smoke inhalation often had few if any broken bones or other injuries, according to hundreds of autopsy reports obtained by USA TODAY.
> Fires have erupted after incidents as minor as an airplane veering off a runway and into brush or hitting a chain-link fence, government records show. The impact ruptures fuel tanks or fuel lines, or both, causing leaks and airplane-engulfing blazes.
> Fires also contributed to the death of at least 308 more people who suffered burns or smoke inhalation as well as traumatic injuries, USA TODAY found. And the fires seriously burned at least 309 people who survived, often with permanent scars after painful surgery.
And while that is about dangers for an occupant it should be noted that a fire from a small airplane crash is not a rare occurrence.
> Aircraft fires often occur following forced landings, and the result is often more dangerous than the forced landing itself. The sad truth is that most light aircraft fuel systems are not designed to withstand crash impacts, and they often fail during a forced landing. Spilled fuel and hot crash components often result in a fuel-fed inferno.
He's not defending this but baring witness to the double standard that a corporation can basically do the same thing(Knowingly put bad hardware/software into a plane for profit vs jumping out of a plane) and kill hundreds and see no consequences.
Every executive and manager in the hierarchy of responsibility should be seeing that jail time, if not even more.
I don't think the person you're replying to thinks that this youtuber should have gotten off scott free, but that the double standard is an indictment of the industry and regulation agencies at large.
Loads of people have smashed or blown up vehicles in the name of entertainment, or clicks. An airplane is just a vehicle. Important is whether what was done was conscious of the safety of others. Seems in this case it was.
Not condoning his actions, but if he didn't intend anyone to be hurt, took reasonable precautions to ensure that, and then as a result, no one got hurt, it seems you're just left with fraud and a few damaged trees. Who even cares?
I similarly wouldn't care if someone targeted their 18-wheeler at a brick wall in the middle of nowhere and bailed, for clicks, and then lied on the accident report. This sensationalist reporting just makes a copycat more likely.
The punishment is for destroying evidence, not destroying a plane. And it's so heavy because otherwise it would make perfect sense to destroy evidence.
Still there must be a difference between destroying evidence for stealing a chewing gum vs a murder?
> And it's so heavy because otherwise it would make perfect sense to destroy evidence.
Thus no, this is no good argument for high punishment for any evidence destroyed?
Proportionality is a principle in many law systems.. not in the US? Wouldn't surprise me too much, but personally I find 20 years also much out of proportion, so not sure why parent poster gets downvoted so much.
(On the other hand, rereading, faces up to 20 years, and judges will likely put this still in proportion, right? So just sensationalist headline once again..)
Court usually takes circumstances into consideration, so yeah, there's proportionality encoded. It's not like everybody's given 20 years automatically.
Destroying evidence for what? A crashed plane that did nothing to no one? Don't be naive, this is a crime punishable by revocation a pilots license and a huge fine. That's it.
Boeing deliberately withheld information on what was causing people to get killed. Actual man slaughter.
>So you think it's okay that someone might just crash a fucking airplane on top of your head because of fucking likes?
What's the point of this question when you know I'm not ok with it. There is no point, so don't ask it when you know the answer.
>Crashing a fucking airplane without controlling a large potential crash side is tremendously dangerous.
Except he controlled the crash site successfully. So what's the point. I think there's gross negligence but "hypothetical unintentional manslaughter" is going to far.
This guy willingly crashed his plane (which might have killed people, no way to know of course), I don't think Boeing ever willingly crashed a plane full of passengers.
The problem is that we really want companies (especially, in the U.S., U.S. companies) to build planes. So we need a regulatory regime that appropriately governs their behavior but also does not result in such draconian penalties for negligence that they decide it would be safer to invest in some other business.
Not to say we've struck exactly the right balance, necessarily. But there's just no logic in making a direct comparison between a company that made an error in designing am aircraft and an individual who flew a plane into the ground on purpose.
There is logic. When you do an investigation the threads will point to individuals and people with names.
Those people should be punished for murder.
Instead the concept of a corporation ends up abstracting the details away and blurring responsibility.
If our justice system was truly just it would seek out and charge named individuals for crimes.
This has the effect of being in actuality more just but it also prevents the entire corporation from pulling off crimes like this as no one can hide behind the protection of the corporation.
It's not that there is "no logic." But that there is fundamental illogic in the way it all works.
The FAA as government gets huge support from big corporations (bribes and other help, partnerships and funding), so of course has to do something for the favor. I doubt some random youtuber(s) can offer continued support to the government, so they are not at all in a similar power position. I am amazed that this is surprising to educated people.
Educated people can still have faith in the good, and be surprised at failings. I was intrigued that the famous Jewish theologian and civil rights activist Abraham Joshua Heschel included surprise as a kind of virtue: "I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale."
It's just brought up as a topic of discussion. Everyone is pretty much aware of what you said.
What isn't fully spelled out is that there are social relationships involved as well. Responsible parties are buddy buddy with regulators while this YouTuber probably pissed off a regulator with his dumb antics so the regulator is unreasonably likely going all out in a fit of annoyance.
fatneckbeard_in_alt_universe_001: this guy will get little to no jail time? Seriously??? What is even the point of having an FAA when both big corp && small fry are !punished?
fatneckbeard_in_alt_universe_002: I can understand why FAA came after big corp. But both big corp && small fry are punished? Nobody got hurt here so what exactly is the government going after? This is truly chilling.
I remember first seeing the video of the guy crashing his plane. It's one of the rare times I opened up yt-dlp just to download the video and archive it, because I was expecting him to take down the video after sufficiently many people caught on to the act.
While a maximum of 20 years prison sounds rather harsh, intentionally crashing a plane is no joke or laughing matter. It's unfortunate that things had to end this way. The FAA does not mess around.
The fact that it wasn't a controlled crash it's what's most alarming -- a plane crash could be achieved legally using qualified stunt professionals etc -- he just parachuted out of a plane leaving the plane to it's own devices. While unlikely it's possible that plane could have crashed in to a person killing them.
34°48'53.6"N 119°57'40.4"W was where the airplane hit the ground.
If you have a look at Google maps, within a 3 to 4 mile radius, there are multiple kids camping grounds. Even assuming they are only sporadically occupied this is a new level of recklessness.
I just checked it out on maps.google. Multiple camping grounds here means something like ~15-20 spread out in all directions in addition to some hiking trails.
[I watched the video (iirc) about a week after all this originally went down. Watching an airplane just kind of cruise around on its own was pretty horrifying. But I did feel a little bit better that afterwards he had to hike around seemingly forever to find someone to give him a ride. Like, at least things were remote, and he's lucky that he didn't die trying to get back to civilization.
However, apparently he thought about this as well, because nope, there's stuff all around that area. This is shooting a gun into the air to see if the bullet will come down and hurt you, but instead of doing it in a dry lake bed you do it right next to a children's hospital so you have someplace to go in case you do get hurt.
The other side of hanlon's razor is "sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice".]
> Over the next few days, he cut up the plane into small pieces, and dumped the parts in trash bins in and around Lompoc City Airport.
I once helped a friend do something like this with a bunch of garbage from a house party he threw at his parents place and wanted to cover up. We drove around dropping bits of the 10+ bags of trash in bins here and there. I'm in awe imagining doing this with a plane.
to this day I believe reiser could have gotten away with it if he hadn't been so clearly socially awkward/autistic. there wasn't much solid evidence at all.
there's something to be said about people instinctively distrusting the socially inept: just look at all these modern "catch a pedophile" outfits, where losers are baited by impossible situations into ruining their life.
...several days after the killing (per the testimony of an officer)[0]. reading books about homicide investigation is not illegal, and certainly not suspicious enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
I believe a more charismatic person could have talked his way out of it. At the very least the first impression wouldn't have been "eccentric unsympathetic computer guy, russian mail-order bride, he probably did it".
Honestly, like a lot of guys who do stunts, he just seemed hooked on the thrill of chasing fame and engagement and to that extent the video was a success. I don't think that makes him an idiot. However, I remember writing a comment at the time that regardless of whether the crash was real or not, he better start being honest when it came to the FAA and the NTSB or he would see some real consequences. It seems trying to destroy evidence and then lying about it to the authorities was a truly idiotic decision.
What’s even funnier is that he probably wouldn’t have been in all that bad of a situation had he just shut the fuck up.
Like he’s obligated to cooperate with the investigation but he’s within his rights to just say “hey this feels like a witch hunt I am not participating or giving statements at all” and it’s not clear how much they really would have done.
Absolute certainty he’d lose his license maybe there’s penalties or fines for stonewalling the investigation, but like it would probably blow over as long as they made sure he never got near the controls of an airplane again.
But then he decided to obstruct a federal investigation. Like that’s the one thing you really can’t do ask Martha Stewart.
he's also been flying since. He made a video about it in which he flies with a CFI, who is clearly so confident in the legality of i that he wears a ski mask during the entire video. Because so long as he's receiving instruction he's arguably not the pilot in command. And I'm gonna bet that as part of this plea deal he's been asked to not pull that crap anymore.
Like, I'm not a pilot but I've read exactly enough to know that the way he handled this is the opposite of the way a private pilot is trained to. So he managed, I assume, to get the idea in his head that a video of someone bailing out of a private plane would attract the attention of low-knowledge rubes for attention and clicks... While not attracting the attention of every other amateur pilot who knows how to work YouTube, as well as the FAA.
>While not attracting the attention of every other amateur pilot who knows how to work YouTube
Yeah want a weird line of thought.
It's funny because of all things you can count on if you get views on YouTube is ... SCRUTINY. Right or wrong scrutiny. Every rando with some idea of how to fly ... or even none, is going to watch that video and pick it apart.
And man that video was easy to pick apart. Dude even had is door open before the engine quit.
Well he had no choice, if you want to jump safely, you need some height, which is contradictory with trying to land the plane (it’s actually a bit of a problem for planes with a parachute basically you can’t try to save the plane)
I don’t think he could have been realistic in a single take.
I think there was in fact room to make the video seem more realistic and still jump safely. But I agree general:
I think he was at a weird intersection where doing all the things he "should" have in the case of an actual engine failure, (try to restart it, make a radio call, try to land (there were plenty of options to land)) and somehow faking that none of those worked / were not sufficient .... would also have introduced a lot of variables he couldn't control / still resulted in a video that didn't look right / raised more suspicious.
Of course the issue ultimately was that doing none of those things was suspicious too... and you have to hide the evidence that your plane was in fact fully functional ...
> On May 22, 2021 Student Pilot Brian Parsley was completed his solo long cross country flight. Approximately 12 miles from airport started experiencing rough engine. Assuming it was "carb ice" took appropriate measures. The camera was started after it cleared to show instructor should it happen again. Shortly after communicating to ATC the video picks up. The aircraft ran out of fuel and this was 100% my responsibility at the end of the day. I did do my flight plan, checked fuel, and all necessary checks prior to leaving. It's also worth noting I've flown the same route with my instructor. So using this assumption and the fact I did my flight planning correctly I flew. This was the wrong decision and the biggest takeaway for me. I will get fuel going forward every time I land regardless of what gages state or distance. That mistake could've cost a life. This was more than just a "near death" experience. It was an incredible learning opportunity for others as well.
On my solo long cc flight, I got lost during the second leg and actually worried about the extra fuel that I burned searching for landmarks. Once I figured out where I was and landed, I went to top off the tanks just in case (in reality I should have had plenty of fuel to get home but I was paranoid).
That's when I found out that my credit card, the only payment I had with me, had expired a week before...
A bit of context is that the FAA doesn't want plane crashes at all (unless you're NASA), even "safe ones" because of the public image, so it's extremely difficult to get a waiver for a stunt if there is a real risk of crashing an airplane, even if it's empty and as safe as possible, it's not about safety, it's about public image. People afraid of flying are a very difficult crowd to manage.
The FAA generally only has jurisdiction over American airspace, while other countries may be a bit more willing to allow deliberate crashes. In 2012, an experiment that involved deliberately crashing a 727 took place in Mexico, as the FAA was unwilling to grant approval to conduct the experiment, but Mexcian authorities were more tolerant of the idea:
Yes, there are real planes sometimes used in movie stunts for doing crashes, it's not all CGI, although most is, doing real things like that costs a lot of money.
But regardless, if "not scaring fly-scared people" was actually a concern, any planes crashing in movies would be forbidden, not just real planes crashing in movies. But it's not.
Not likely given the broad sweep of the First Amendment. Much easier for the FAA to deny a license to crash a plane under various safety rationales than to say "you can't show that because of the message" in the United States. The latter is almost certainly unconstitutional.
There was a sponsorship deal with a wallet company involved. Airworthy planes seem to start from around $20k so it may even work out. Tho the intelligence of the guy doing it seems not to be brightest so I would not rule out it being a lose-lose situation out of stupidity.
I think they could be, if they lead to subscriptions and long-term success for his channel. Not saying it was in any way ethically justifiable, just that from a purely machiavellian perspective I think it could make sense.
This is a plea deal, no one is going to plea to the maximum, which in this case is 20 years. The punishment can also be a fine [1], which may be fitting if the goal was profit from a YouTube video.
When news articles mention the maximum, especially in headlines, it feels a bit misleading. It seems there's a decent chance there is little or no prison.
> no one is going to plea to the maximum, which in this case is 20 years.
Unlike in some state systems, federal plea deals do not usually packaged with a sentence. You can plea to a more limited set of charges than initially charged with (or than the Feds were waiving around at you), but you usually don’t “plea to” a particular sentence within the range for the charge you plea guilty to. [0]
The reason the maximum sentence is what is in news articles is that it is a fact. Anything else as to what the sentence will be is speculation, but that the statutory maximum for the charged offenses is the upper limit is an uncontroversial legal boundary.
[0] revised from stronger language, a reply on a separate subthread corrected that; it is possible for federal plea agreements to include a binding sentence terms which the court can only reject by also rejecting the plea agreement. But very often they do not, and the reporting of the statutoriy maximum is in that case correct as the only knowable limit.
There are hundreds of lawyers and retired judges who would happily and legally provide their opinion to be published alongside their name, this is not done because of disinterest. Not because of a commitment to factual reporting.
I could publish an article saying Elon Musk is going to die. It's incontrovertible, and likely the only fact you can say about his death, given in fact that he's not yet dead and going insofar as to agree that all people will die eventually. Do you think an article saying "Elon Musk is going to die" is not disingenuous?
> Do you think an article saying “Elon Musk is going to die” is not disingenuous?
If that is the entire content of the article and it has no context to which it is addressed, I think its pointless, but, no, I see no reason in your hypothetical or any obvious extension to see it as disingenuous.
I also don’t see it as particularly usefully analogous to the situation previously being discussed.
I mean, to me personally that sounds like a gimmicky title. Without putting why he is going to die, it sounds less factual and more like a blog post about how Elon Musk should learn to smell the roses because he isn’t getting any younger.
I get what you’re saying though. With sentencing, I feel like the maximum sentence is always given, and while dramatic it is very common to see.
The problem for Popehat was that eating sei whales is "apparently non cool"? Seriously?
All cetaceans are protected by law, morons!. We don't even know how many species of fin whales exist (one was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023) and you want sushi? Go f*k yourselves popehats!. Thousands of people spent blood, sweat and tears for the last 60 years working really hard for saving them.
If we let it pass unpunished just because "my cultcha" the calling effect will be catastrophic. Deliberately crashing a plane against a natural park is not different. Is a test. If it goes unpunished you are fully giving the castle keys to any criminals trying to make a profit of the same stunt, and they will.
Ken White has a informal style of writing with sarcasm, irreverency and jokes that honestly makes it less dry of a read. In no way is he saying eating whales should be allowed.
It's funny when you take a plea you have to say you were not coerced into making the plea even though everyone knows that you were threatened with the 'trial tax' of an extremely high maximum sentence in order to pressure you into taking the plea. That's the whole reason for these max sentences. Think of the 'trial tax' as a threat to 'not dare' exercise your right to trial. And then the plea includes taking away your Constitutional right to appeal later. It's like Constitutional rights are malleable (except of course the good old 2a, then those same people are fine with restricting other rights say Constitutional rights can not be violated). Sad that there are euphemism like 'trial tax' 'diesel therapy' for blatant Constitutional rights violations in the USA.
It's funny, in Illinois they altered the judge's plea script a couple of years back. They used to say "has anyone made you any promises in regards to this plea?", but now they say "except for the prosecutor, has anyone made any promises.."
It is hard, because if you are innocent you have to make a tough choice. Two weeks after my arrest I was offered a plea to be released the next day. I refused and it took nine and a half years in pretrial custody to actually get my case heard.
No recourse yet, still working on it. Might be zero.
There is a right to a speedy trial, which in Illinois is 120 days once you demand it. Sadly the reality is that it is very hard to get that clock ticking if you are trying to prepare for trial, or waiting on evidence, etc. Also, COVID stopped the clock for two years of that too.
Technically correct isn't actually the best kind of correct. "Local Man Shorts One Share of IBM, Faces Up To One Billion Dollars of Loss" is technically correct, in the sense that there's no real upper bound, but it's not useful, and it's actively misleading.
A reasonable estimate based on sentencing guidelines isn't super hard for a lawyer to work out, and it'd be far more useful for readers, but it's slightly more work and it makes for significantly less exciting headlines.
I mean, a short stock is unbounded. A sentence for an individual charge is bounded.
Lots of things lawyers do are easy for lawyers to figure out. That doesn't mean a programmer is going to be able to make a reasonable estimate unless they both understand the law and the history of the accused.
Neither your example or the example below with Tesla speed make sense.
Sentencing is a fairly well defined things. You have guidelines and upper limits that come with specific charges, and then the judge uses those guidelines and various other factors to then sentence somewhere along that spectrum. Anyone read a handful of sentencing news stories is very well familiar with how it works.
> A reasonable estimate based on sentencing guidelines isn't super hard for a lawyer to work out
I'm not sure what priors the lawyer would use to guess the expected penalty for something as unprecedented as "Crashed a plane on purpose for YouTube likes."
Perhaps the maximum sentence is preferable for the news outlet because it's a number that's definitely not wrong?
I mean, it’s a bit like if I reported “Next-gen Tesla could reach speeds as high as 671 million miles per hour”. But in both cases the reality will fall so far short of the maximum that the maximum’s value is essentially irrelevant.
So then, leaving it off the headline, and including something like your comment as a hefty qualifier when mentioning it in the article would be a way to present that aspect more honestly and without sensationalising it?
Depends on your personality. I started in a single-man cell for the first few months, then I was in the Hole for a couple of stretches and that was solitary, and then during COVID I got my own cell again for about 8 months. I am an only child, so I am incredibly comfortable being alone for long periods. I hate sharing a cell with someone else, as 99% of the time you probably won't like the other person. Most two-man cells only have enough floor space for one person to stand, so you are constantly shuffling around each other. And bumping into anyone in jail is immediate grounds for a fight, so you are constantly on guard.
Plus, no-one wants to be in the same box as another man who is taking a shit. And the food is so bad that practically everyone has diarrhea all day every day.
Every time I hear stories about someone being wrongfully committed while having nothing to do with the facts I'm super scared.
A person I know who lives in Sicily shared the very same exact name with a local criminal who was often mentioned in tapes and got arrested and jailed for few weeks till it was cleared it was somebody else. It even was a strike of luck the other one was arrested few weeks after him, and you know how it goes in small Sicily villages, everyone knows each other so he also occasionally would find himself in the same places known criminals would hang out, same super markets of bars or restaurants.
Another person I know spent a similar amount of time accused of aggression towards police. He was stopped for drunk driving (which isn't a jailable felony in Italy obviously) and when he was asked to leave the car he leaned on cop's car and they "framed" that as an aggression while the guy simply couldn't keep his balance so he half felt on the cops vehicle. He was cleared thanks to cameras.
It's fun when you pissed someone with authority off and get on the sh!t list and the local guard kicks an inmate out of their bed and puts them on a floor (they call it a boat but it's just being on the floor) and gives you the bed (the guards can't get violent with you, but they know how to get someone else to). Not every inmate is going to beat you up, but when you are moved from place to place during the month or more transport takes one of the guys who get's kicked out to make room for you is guaranteed to fight over it.
The one you don't think of is that they won't unshackle you to use the bathroom (especially on con-air) so half the guy's backsides are covered in their own excrement because you need your hands to wipe. Good times, good times.
Prisoner Transport Services is totally inhumane. The sheer number of horror stories I've heard from fellow inmates of their weekslong journeys across the USA in the most rotten conditions imaginable.
20 years is the maximum, not what he'll get. Skimming the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, I make it:
* A base level of 14 for an obstruction of justice charge (§2J1.2)
* -2 for acceptance of responsibility (§3E1.1)
Assuming no previous criminal history, that's a guideline sentence of 10-16 months. If he can get it down one more point to a level 11 sentence, that's a Zone B sentence and can be entirely served on probation.
* +2 for the extensive planning enhancement (b)(3)(B)/(C)
No agreement w.r.t:
* Criminal history (which I believe is fairly standard)
* +2 for aggravated role - §3B1.1(c).
* Going outside the guidelines
~ I'm surprised there's no acceptance of responsibility reduction reserved by the defendant; feels like the DoJ were pressing reasonably hard on this one (tbf, seems entirely reasonable given the conduct here) ~ Correction: this is agreed on p. 2/3
If the court sentences to 18-24 months (p. 12), both parties have waived right to appeal. (And aligns with the minimum level of 15 on p. 3)
is there a video or a simple follow through how one would be able to practically search through city/state/federal court cases with your speed and precision?
I'm afraid I'm not aware of any how-to guide. City/County/State tend to be harder; federal court dockets are all uploaded to PACER (https://pacer.uscourts.gov/) which has fairly good search options, though be advised that there's a usage charge. Lots of stuff then gets uploaded to RECAP (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/), but it is inherently less complete than PACER, though if you do start using PACER, I strongly recommend installing the RECAP browser extension as that will upload any documents you view to RECAP, as well as advise you when a copy is already available on RECAP.
For what it's worth, this one was:
1. Find the DoJ press release (I think this was just Google search for a few keywords)
2. Accidentally notice that the press release said that the plea agreement had been filed in court
3. Open the court's PACER instance, and search for the defendant's name
4. Open the docket for the case, and download the plea agreement
5. Skim through (ignoring the factual background since I was looking for the sentencing information)
I can't imagine the government agreeing to a plea where this guy does not spend at least symbolic time in the pokey. The offense was too obnoxious and high profile to let him walk.
It's not just obnoxious, people hike out there regularly he could have hit and he could easily have started a significant fire in a vulnerable environment. He endangered others for a sponsorship deal and then engaged in a conspiracy to hide it.
I'm not going to lie - I find the video utterly fascinating and I think the world is a better and more interesting place now that it exists. It's a fascinating path permutation of the human condition / state space traversal.
I do think what he did was stupid and brazen and that he should be punished. The punishment should be dealt in such a way that nobody else attempts this again. I'm also glad nobody was hurt (the probability of that was extremely low).
But all of that said, I'm very glad that this video and anecdote now exist. It's incredibly fascinating. Nobody was hurt, and it's such a novel thing.
If you haven't seen the video, you need to see it.
> If you haven't seen the video, you need to see it.
I disagree entirely. It lacked novelty. The entire thing felt as contrived as an amateur stunt, which is what it was, and little more: a precious snowflake and overt narcissist desperate for attention.
I agree with you - it is just not interesting. It is in the same vein as many corporate promo videos. Here is a Red Bull video of someone riding a BMX bike in a bowl suspended underneath a hot balloon at 2000ft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mnizjZat3Q
The point of these outrageous videos is to get attention and promote a brand. Does it really work on their target market: jaded young adults?
Also, I can't tell if any of these videos are real anymore. I don't care because the novelty, the shock, the wow factor wore off years ago.
So someone jumped out of a crashing plane. Whatever. Could be fake. Could be real. Definitely not interesting anymore.
> I find the video utterly fascinating and I think the world is a better and more interesting place now that it exists. It's a fascinating path permutation of the human condition / state space traversal.
The Thomas fire [0] was only 5 years ago. It burned 100k+ acres, killed two people and indirectly killed 20 more, and cost "$2.2B USD" to deal with.
Southern California is not the place to drop planes out of the sky for lulz or money.
One take, perhaps the most natural one for humans, is to reprimand behaviors for their hypothetical outcomes. It's what the law does. It's what parents do. Admonition is a lesson to everyone.
But this is a rare, once in a universe event. And like with D.B. Cooper, Max Headroom, Chris McCandless, and every other wild act of rule breaking, I'm going to hold it close and wonder.
It's possible to hold conflicting opinions and emotions and simultaneously.
Honestly it's more indictment of human nature and the need for external validation. I hate the fact that people are watching it at all, it almost gives ammo for future potential copycats.
As an amateur working towards their PPL, the whole thing is just gross.
>It's a fascinating path permutation of the human condition / state space traversal.
that raises the question : do you somehow attribute value to human action based on unique-ness? If so, why? It's an interesting philosophy , but I don't understand it as far as 'human improvement' goes.
> I think the world is a better and more interesting place
I think it's unique, but I also think it could possibly set a (yet another) dangerous precedent among net celebrities seeking the next illegal-yet-doable way to make a name for themselves -- I think that itself and things similar to this are a net-negative for the world at large -- it'll likely lead to more dangerous behavior that is then punctuated by larger and more broad legislation that will reduce personal liberty for the sake of some YTers whims once.
There are plenty of fascinating real skydiving and real flying videos to watch. This stunt is revolting and an insult to pilots, skydivers, and the general public. Fuck him and the chute he jumped with.
The FAA will want to make it very unattractive for copycat YouTubers. “No bro, did you hear about that guy?” is what they want prospective YouTube aircraft ditchers to hear from their friends.
> Harmed or threatened to cause harm to a person or property damage
The enhancement is doing so "in order to obstruct the administration of justice" -- I don't think that any of the actual dangerous actions were done to obstruct.
> Substantial interference with administration of justice
That's defined as a "premature or improper termination of a felony investigation; an indictment, verdict, or any judicial determination based upon perjury, false testimony, or other false evidence; or the unnecessary expenditure of substantial governmental or court resources."
I think the first two don't fit the factual picture that we're aware of; the last _could_ but I think it unlikely that there was that much conduct that was beyond the obstruction charge that caused this.
> Extensive in scope, planning, or preparation
Possibly - the SG don't go into much detail about what they mean by this; however, I would be surprised if this enhancement applied (but less so than the other two).
Yeah, you're probably right. The prosecutor press release makes a point of talking about his experience as a pilot and a skydiver, so "special skills" might apply. But the big-ticket accelerator is (b)(1)(A), and I think you're right that it can't apply to him exfiltrating and cutting up his own airplane.
Turns out yes to the extensive planning enhancement, as well as an aggravated role enhancement. But no to the harm/substantial interference/special skills enhancements. Details in uncle/aunt comment (is that a term?) now that I've found the plea agreement.
Thanks! I found it in the California Central District PACER instance by searching for his full name (both the court and name given in the DoJ press release) - I suspect the national index syncs only so often with the individual PACER instances and it just hasn't got this case yet.
Note, however, that even if an agreement was reached that such an agreement is an agreement on what to present to the court; the court may not be bound, in accepting the plea agreement, to accept, in sentencing, the recommended offense level, or the recommend adjustments, or even to stick to the guidelines, depending on the exact form of the agreement.
[EDIT: Revised based on a correction in the response comment].
I believe - and to be honest the Sentencing Guidelines are just on the boundary of my wheelhouse, but plea agreements are well outside - that Rule 11(c)(1)(C) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allow a plea agreement that binds the court, so depends on the nature of the exact plea agreement. (see also §6B1.2 of the Sentencing Guidelines)
There's no charge other than obstruction of justice? That's one of those crimes that shouldn't be valid at all without an actual crime in the background. If no crime other than obstruction of justice was committed, how can justice have been obstructed?
You make an excellent point. When I was in jail there were many people who were charged only with obstruction of justice or resisting arrest. Often what would happen is law enforcement would try to arrest someone or search their property and the suspect would interfere with the process. Later, whatever caused the police to take action in the first place was nullified, either by reason of being illegal or having no factual basis, but the suspect was now still in jail for potentially years based on their (possibly) rightful action in trying to stop the police from whatever they were not supposed to be doing.
Sometimes it can just be a lose/lose scenario once you come to the attention of law enforcement. If at all possible, never put yourself in a situation, or associate with those who are going to bring heat upon you from the police.
Jacob plead guilty after the government found Jacob's unilateral recording of himself making false statements during a phone call with an FAA investigator. The plea bargain mentions these false statements, but only the search warrant notes that Jacob made perhaps the only recording of himself committing a federal crime.
The search warrant also includes a narrative into the investigation of four other crimes for which Jacob was investigated, but not ultimately charged.
"Why don't you push back against such a bizarre overreach?"
Well, gee, I'm just gonna run right out and riot over it. Thanks for the suggestion.
Is it not a criminal offense to lie to whatever the equivalent of the FAA is in your country if you're a pilot or otherwise under investigation for the equivalent crimes this YouTuber committed?
The context is important here: If I understand correctly, the pilot had to have a license issued by the FAA and should've been made aware of laws and penalties in the context of operating a plane. Operating a plane is not a right, it's a privilege. It's also in the public interest that there are strict regulations and investigators with the ability to look into these types of crimes.
The pilot ditched a plane and then tried to obstruct an investigation into the crime. He did commit several crimes and potentially endangered others. He tried to lie to cover it up. As a U.S. citizen who has a vested interest in not being hit by planes dropping out of the sky because the pilot decided to try to get more YouTube views - I'm not particularly offended that this is a crime.
The FAA investigator's job is to assess the cause of air accidents. That may involve interviewing a lot of people with a lot of incentive to lie -- pilots, executives of plane manufacturers who may have cut corners leading to accidents, air traffic controllers, engineers trying to avoid blame, etc. Lots of scenarios where the incentive to lie is high, the impact of a cover-up may be bad for society overall, and without penalties people would lie with impunity.
There should be guardrails around what they can ask. If he was convicted of lying about something totally unrelated to air safety, I might feel differently. This does not feel like an overreach to me.
The original version had some silly BS "I'm so brave for posting this video always wear a parachute (even though I don't in any other video)" text at the beginning and a ridge wallet sponsorship.
I hope Mr Jacobs ends up serving several years (5-10 seems reasonable) to very strongly dissuade others from having similar ideas in the future. General aviation is already a relatively high risk activity without bringing reckless attention whoring influencers into the equation.
The guy is truly a moron and deserves some jail time, but 10 years? For being an idiot influencer that didn’t harm anyone? Heck, if you rape someone in California, the max time in jail is less than that.
The fact he didn't harm anyone (or anything other than his plane) is partly luck. Yes it's an uninhabited area, but there are hikers, campers, wildlife, etc. It's a public area. It was incredibly reckless.
As for your comment about sentencing in California, that possibly says less about what the punishment for recklessly endangering lives and property should be than it does about criminal sentencing in California, in my opinion. One might also suggest that putting completely innocent lives at risk over YouTube clicks is something that would be absolutely harmful if enough people engaged in that sort of behaviour, and to that extent I think that a sentence that corresponds to what one would receive for certain kinds of sexual assault is not inappropriate.
Curiously, the charge he pled guilty to as part of the plea deal has nothing to do with planes. He pled guilty to obstructing a federal investigation (of the crash). Makes sense. Proving his intent w.r.t. the crash back then would be harder than proving that he DID remove the wreck and subsequently destroyed it.
I dunno. I believe the guy is guilty and should be punished for recklessness, etc. but I don’t like it when authorities rely on indirect charges to “get” someone.
Prove the original crime, don’t rely and peripheral procedure like “they lied to a federal agent” (uhh) cop-out. Do your job.
Likewise I’m not don’t of people getting off on “technicalities” (Some more than others)
If you read the article, it's not really a technicality. He filed a false incident report with the FAA, lied to the FAA about what happened, and destroyed evidence despite an order from the NTSB to preserve the wreckage in order to cover up what really happened. That is all illegal for a good reason.
What’s the angle? The fuselage doesn’t crumple one way if it’s staged and another way if it was an accident. The metal and construction materials cannot know intent.
Do you need prove a crime was committed in the first place? Or can the government accuse me of being a drug dealer but I disposed of the evidence when I took out the trash last week so I obstructed their investigation.
Did you read the article? He destroyed the remains of the plane AFTER the FAA explicitly told him to not even touch it.
Sure, no evidence, no crime, but in this case there was evidence that the feds knew about. If you destroy the evidence before the cops know it exists, fair game. But this wasn't it.
As usual, the coverup is worse than the crime. Especially for the guy getting railroaded.
Being asked to not do it is not prereq to being charged. Even if the FAA didn’t ask, he could still be charged and prosecuted for the same crime. Its against law to destroy evidence of a crime but you don’t need to prove the crime actually existed. They could have said he was drug smuggling and still charged with obstruction of justice for the same act.
> The penalty for destroying this evidence should not exceed the original crime or value of the property I destroyed in any rational way.
The rational reason is that this is a behaviour we want to discourage. We want to diacourage it because it makes it more complicated and more costly to catch criminals, and more likely for them to get away with their crimes.
So if I lift a candy bar at a 7-11, am detained and questioned and the investigator notices chocolate smudges on my cheeks and uses that as reason to have my stomach pumped to produced destroyed evidence after I claimed I didn’t eat it, they can stick me in the slammer for 20 years for lying and destroying evidence?
There is the idea of commensurate punishment. 20 years for destroying evidence for something that while serious didn’t defraud anyone, maim anyone or cause damage I think is unreasonable and unconstitutional.
And here is where the reporting of these number goes wrong. The youtuber in question won’t go to jail for 20 years. You as the chocolate thief won’t go to jail for 20 years.
20 year is the absolute maximum for the worst evidence tampering you can think of. A serial offender, after knowingly and willingly leveling a city block with people in there the second time to hide his street gang’s accounting fraud, and exhibiting open contempt towards the judge while loudly proclaiming he will do it again after they let him out. That person can not get more than 20 years for the specific crime of evidence tampering. That is what the 20 years statutory maximum is.
Definitely disagree here. In the system you’re proposing it’s a no-brainer to tamper with evidence: you won’t end up worse than you are and might even get out of it entirely! You’re basically incentivizing criminals to tamper with evidence—you clearly didn’t think this through.
Arguably the lying to investigators crime is worse than the original. He crashed a plane he owned with only him in it. Sure, there was risks of danger to the ground and wildfires, but those risks are the same if you accidentally crash a plane, and the actual resulting damage was indeed minimal. Reckless behavior that ultimately does not cause damage or harm is rarely penalized heavily.
Lying to investigators and destroying evidence is unquestionably wrongdoing, and required far more explicit intent and action than merely failing to correctly fly an aircraft.
“Failing to correctly fly an aircraft” is quite an understatement. This person didn’t just accidentally run out of fuel, or accidentally stalled.
He intentionally set up the airplane with cameras, intentionally wore a parachute, intentionally stopped the engine mid-flight and then intentionally jumped out of the airplane while holding a camera on a selfie stick.
None of this can be described as ”failing to correctly fly an aircraft”. What he did required explicit intent.
> I believe the guy is guilty and should be punished for recklessness, etc. but I don’t like it when authorities rely on indirect charges to “get” someone.
I think in the absence of actual injuries, the obstruction charge is actually the more serious criminal charge applicable. Which is not an indirect charge; obstruction is a distinct crime with its own harms.
It really irks me when authorities go after someone, can't prove something then because they don't want to look bad and want to get a promotion will instead get people for nonsense like they did Mrs Stewart. She should have been able to sure the government and get punitive damages for malicious prosecution.
Why? Do police officers get fired or lose money when technicalities free criminals? If so, why couldn't we just keep that part and not release the criminals on the technicality?
> Do police officers get fired or lose money when technicalities free criminals?
Presumably there's some level of incentive to catch criminals. Otherwise why would police officers do anything? (Of course another possible answer is that they don't).
> If so, why couldn't we just keep that part and not release the criminals on the technicality?
Because it's very hard to maintain an incentive unless it's aligned all the way through an organisation. The consequences for police dishonesty needs to be something that will cause police chiefs to lose elections. Letting criminals go free is one of the few things that does that.
My point is that letting a criminal go isn't a consequence. Suppose a police officer, instead of waiting for a warrant that was going to be issued, barges into a suspect's home without a warrant and finds the evidence to convict the suspect.
The officer has done wrong (entering the home without the warrant) and should face some punishment for that. The threat of punishment deters the officer from acting without a warrant.
On the other hand, releasing the criminal, who is actually guilty, is not a real deterrent. What if the officer doesn't particularly care if the suspect gets arrested or not?
It's the threat of consequences to the particular individual that decide their actions - not the threat of conflicts with the purpose of their organization. Put another way, I bet fewer police officers would commit misconduct if the consequences were "you personally go to jail" as opposed to "a criminal is freed and your organization is supposed to do the opposite of that, don't you feel bad?"
The police are politically powerful and will simply not tolerate that level of accountability. It's hard enough to fire them when they commit outright murder.
Also, the entire institution of police/prosecutors/courts/judges need a disincentive against misconduct not just individuals. Otherwise they can just use a revolving door of disposable/sacrificial cops to violate rights and get convictions.
Allowing convictions to stand in spite of illegal investigation methods makes rules against those methods completely meaningless for defendants.
Fully agree. After how obstruction of justice without underlying crime was used in political trials recently, I would fully support either removing or substantially increasing bar for it to be a crime.
“Faces up to…” means exactly what it says, that is “Faces a sentence that cannot exceed…”
Now, it doesn’t (in general) mean “Is likely to receive, if convicted”, which some people tend to assume, but it also doesn’t mean nothing. And given the fact that upward departure is allowed from the federal sentencing guidelines, but not from the statutory maximums for the offenses charged, it is literally all you can tell with certainty from the charges themselves.
My prior understanding of the consequences was that he may or may not go to prison for an amount of time, and not a whole lot has changed. I guess I now know he won't go to prison for 40 years, but that's not exactly condensing the probability cloud.
That's great, and if humans were a silicon-based life form that parsed language dispassionately, I'm sure it would be relevant.
But humans are made of meat, and words and phrases have connotations. There's a difference in the perception (both to the subject and society) between those two options.
"Cannot exceed" makes it pretty clear that it's a maximum bound, and doesn't imply that the actual number will be any particular distance between zero and the maximum. "Up to" leads the reader to assume that the likely sentence is close to the stated amount.
> “Up to” leads the reader to assume that the likely sentence is close to the stated amount.
Honestly, I think most readers will be more familiar with how “up to” doesn’t mean that it is likely to be close than with the meaning of “cannot exceed”, from experience (as “up to” is regularly used in this way commercially), but, yes, unfortunately given only one figure, even if clearly marked as an upper bound, people who aren’t actively critically reading are likely to fixate on it as if it was a prediction of the likely result rather than a bound.
It seems like the DoJ and basically every other executive office disagrees with you, given that they get to write the reports, and they've spent years saying "up to" in press releases designed to imply that the listed number is accurate and scare the subject of the investigation.
> given that they get to write the reports, and they’ve spent years saying “up to” in press releases designed to imply that the listed number is accurate and scare the subject of the investigation.
Press releases aren’t designed to scare the subject of the investigation, especially not press releases announcing a plea agreement that has already been reached.
Well, if you sponsor a YouTuber to do a brand placement and he goes and does something drastic that wasn't in the contract, should you be punished? You're the victim too, he brought negative press to your doorstep brand-wise.
I think there’s no way to practically do what I want. I don’t think it would work out.
I just sort of feel like there should be some sort of incentive to help ensure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. If you have a contract that explicitly says what the person is supposed to do and they don’t, then it seems like you have a good defense to me.
On the other hand if you have a contract that says something along the lines of “do something that gets 1 million views and will pay you $200,000” then I feel like you should be liable.
I really dislike the current trend of people just doing extreme stuff to try to get views. A few people have been killed, it’s kind of amazing the number isn’t higher. And I’m wary of anything that might be seen as encouraging them.
But again, there’s probably no way to actually enforce that in any kind of law.
Ideally, the contract should stipulate that you agree to have brand placements in upcoming content that isn't outside the ordinary of what's come before it (i.e., an alignment of values), ergo not stuff like this that comes out of nowhere and is unlike anything else thus far. The pros will want to approve each and every video prior to publication, but a staggering number of mid-sized biz don't sign off or see it beforehand because they perhaps quite naively trust people to err on the side of good taste and legality.
Publicity stunts and gimmicks are nothing new, even extreme ones, it's just now it reaches the entire world instead of just that area or country, especially if the "story" is pretty much as simple as a YouTube URL and a pithy summary from a journo.
Seems like this guy didn't even really have a financial incentive for this stunt - it cost him $5000 for the plane and another $5000 for the helicopter to pull it out of the forest. All that for $8000 from the metal wallet company.
I guess you could guess he was doing it for potentially more lucrative sponsorships later. But I really don't think he was thinking that far ahead. Not if he thought he was going to get away with this foolishness.
I remember being taught about "yellow journalism" in the 1890s history chapter in school. Maybe in the future they will have some name for the kind of influencer culture or sponsored deceptive clickbait youtubing illustrated in this article and they will teach about it in some history chapter in schools.
> Jacob admitted he...had created the video to make money through a sponsorship with a wallet company.
How much money would the sponsor have paid, and would it have been worth more than the cost of the crashed plane? I have no idea what planes cost, or how much sponsors pay, but this struck me as unlikely to be profitable (even before the costs of his criminal prosecution).
The search warrant (posted elsewhere on this thread) answers this question.
He bought the plane specifically for this stunt a few weeks before, he did not use his normal plane. He paid $5,000 for the plane and $5,000 for the helicopter recovery of the wreckage. He received $8,000 from the Ridge Wallet sponsorship.
Here's the relevant quotes-
>Inspector Krantz provided me a receipt he
obtained from the company Ridge Wallet. The receipt showed an
$8,000 payment to JACOB for the sponsored ad shown on JACOB’s
YouTube video.
> An FAA Aircraft Bill of Sale for N29508,
Taylorcraft BL65, serial number 2351 showed that, effective
October 06, 2021, Laura Smith (seller) transferred ownership of
the aircraft to JACOB (purchaser). The sale price listed on the
form was $5,000.
> On January 05, 2022, Sinton provided Krantz a
written statement via e-mail. I reviewed the statement and
learned the following: (1) JACOB called SINTON a few days before
December 10, 2021, to lift his wrecked Taylorcraft airplane out
of the forest; (2) JACOB said he was cleared to salvage the
plane; (3) On December 10, 2021, Sinton flew his helicopter and
met JACOB and a friend at Rancho Siquoc (Santa Maria,
California); (4) Sinton flew JACOB and his friend to the
wreckage and dropped them off with straps and shackles; (5)
Sinton landed in an open field nearby, put on the helicopter
long line and returned to the wreckage site; (6) Sinton hooked
onto the plane and flew it to JACOB’s trailer; (7) Sinton sent
JACOB an invoice for $4,950; and (8) On December 31, 2021,
JACOB’s friend “Steve Dozier” paid Sinton $5,000 on behalf of
JACOB.
He's not facing 20 years of jail time for crashing the plane. That would have been revocation of his license and possibly some time for reckless endangerment.
He's facing 20 years of jail time for wanton destruction of evidence and impeding a federal investigation. The FAA doesn't have the resources to launch a deep detective dive on every crash, and the penalties are set to highly discourage the practice of impeding understanding of what happened in a crash because that's part of the process of making the air safer for everyone (ground-side as well as air-side).
Even the wreck itself, in its undisturbed state, would have been valuable for better understanding of how an uncontrolled plane meets its end (including possible opportunities to improve the safety of the inevitable disassembly when it finds the ground). ... unless some likes-hound cuts the plane up into tiny pieces and tries to hide it.
Your desire is that reckless disregard for human life, tampering with evidence and lying on official government documents aren't crimes unless a person is physically hurt?
Got it, most people in our democracy disagree with you, but feel free to vote in the next election.
your comment is unhelpful and unnecessarily aggressive. a better way to express the same sentiment would be pointing out the reasons that evidence tampering, despite not having an immediate victim, can be harmful.
It shouldn't illegal to potentially harm others? I'd follow your reasoning if it was his land and he took precautions to make sure there was no one else on the land where he plan to crash, but it doesn't seem like that was the situation. He basically hip-fired a plane from the sky to a public nature park, hoping no one got hurt.
Also, excluding all the coverups he engaged in, of course.
Well it worked out better than somebody who tried to repeat the telephone book stunt in the Sopranos (Phil Leotardo shoots somebody through a telephone book at close range to make his point about next time)
What a trash person. Cutting up the plane and distributing the wreckage. They clearly knew it was a crime. I hope they get the upper bounds of the sentencing guidelines.
Just a small question. Why does crashing a plane cause such a huge discussion and such an impressive sentence? unless someone causes damage to any public or private property while crashing the plane it's a harmless thing to do. Who is it hurting and why is the YouTuber punished?Curious.
There are probably many reasons for this, but here’s my take: the GA community is largely self-policing. There are dozens of regs one could break — whether it’s 8 hours bottle to throttle or busting VFR cloud mins — however the pilot community adheres to them almost religiously. To have someone so blatantly and publicly violate regs with a complete disregard for safety and property would be setting a terrible precedent for the FAA.
Additionally, this is in the best interests of the GA community as a whole, given that it always has been and will continue to be under scrutiny from the general public. No one wants there to be the perception that among them there is a 100LL cowboy who’s gonna bust through a bravo, slam a red bull, and ditch their plane over a neighborhood.
The hammer needs to come down, and it needs to come down hard.
How linear is the scale? I presume that 300,000 views for a video does not give the video's uploader $3,000. (Or does it?) Conversely, would 3 million views = $300,000, or more than that?
> Trevor Jacob (born August 6, 1993) is an American snowboard cross competitor, extreme sports athlete, YouTuber, and former aircraft pilot.
For anyone else wondering if it's a YouTuber they know. It seems more like they're an athlete that dabbles in YouTube and got famous for this one video.
I think the 20 years is more to make an example out of him. In those days where people eat soap, put themselves in danger, harass police officers and even crash planes to get views / attention, this kind of sentence will put fear in people, I think.
There were two of these, one guy crashing his plane over land (this guy) and another iirc that did the same thing over the sea. Anybody know what happened with that second guy?
I’m not trying to insinuate that coming clean would have absolved him, but I do wonder what it would have looked like if he admitted to investigators that he crashed the plane on purpose.
It was beyond obvious: the idea of trying to glide and land to a safe place didn't even scratch his mind which is the standard procedure, and all he did as soon as the engine stopped was to go in parachute mode.
yea, amateur hour youtube production too not only disgraceful behavior of a pilot and a human, one could have gotten so much more drama out of actually "trying everything" before "accidentally" finding a parachute in the plane and getting out "at the last moment"
Another story of why you should never talk to the police (or investigators of any kind). This kid would have been fine if he didn't fucking say anything to them.
Intentionally crashing a plane into a national park, in a state that deals with lots of wildfires, is incredibly reckless. Lucky no one got killed, or that a wildfire didn’t start.
It’s beyond reckless. But ironically it’s not even close to the worst part of what he did.
The whole thing went to another level when he lifted the plane out with e helicopter. There’s essentially no possible way he was going to get away with that part the mind really boggles with what he was thinking there.
> Intentionally crashing a plane into a national park, in a state that deals with lots of wildfires, is incredibly reckless.
Given that wildfires are, as you note, common, why is that supposed to be an aggravating factor?
You can't actually make the wildfire problem any worse by starting an additional fire. The more frequent fires are, the less fuel there is for each fire to burn. And in the other direction, if you suppress a fire, all that means is that another fire later will be worse.
After some time you would have one humid ancient forest more, that would be an extremely desirable goal in California. Also very rare because is ruined by mantras that people repeat since thousands of years
Just from what I know, top of head without looking it up.
National Parks run by National Park Service. Federally protected lands. There are lot fewer of them. They are more tourist-oriented and are treated like natural wonders for the public to experience. Very high restrictions to protect the land (staying on trail in certain areas, pets, campfires, leave no trace, camp and wilderness permits, manicured roads and trails). Has an entrance fee. Patrolled by park rangers. Often has crowds.
National Forest run by US Forest Service. Also federally protected and managed. There are a lot more of them and aren't marketed with much grandeur as a national park. They often contain a maze of rough, less-maintained forest roads. You can camp anywhere in them for free mostly without any fee or permit requirement, so it's sort of like wilderness. Less stringent rules of what you can and can't do. Very easy to drive into a national forest and see no one around. If I'm ever on the road, I'll sleep in a national forest or other public lands
In Washington I tend to have a simpler way to memorize which one I'm in: have I passed a sign that said "national X" and see mostly stumps from logging operations? Forest. Otherwise, park (and there's almost certainly a fee booth ahead).
National Parks, managed by the National Park Service, are designated primarily for preservation and public enjoyment. You're there to observe and enjoy, but not to alter. Activities like logging, mining, and hunting are generally prohibited.
On the other hand, National Forests, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, follow a multiple-use and sustained-yield approach. They're designed to support a variety of activities, including logging, grazing, mining, and recreation. These activities are carried out under sustainable practices to ensure the resources remain for future generations.
"National parks focus on protecting natural and historic resources "unimpaired for future generations." Park rangers work for the National Park Service (NPS) under the Department of Interior.
National forests, on the other hand, emphasize not only resource preservation, but other kinds of use as well."
Parks are generally more developed with facilities/amenities. NF land is just federally owned forestland. I endorse ngokevin's more detailed sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35910185
Not true. Lots of National Forest land has campgrounds, maintained trails, wildlife protection areas, etc. There is also lumber harvesting. It's for many different kinds of use.
At the time, I had just finished sending in an appeal to being denied a medical clearance to become a pilot because of a history of clinical depression.
That appeal required undergoing a battery of tests, a psychological evaluation, multiple meetings with a therapist and a report from the same, and 15 hours of flight instruction plus a report of my performance by the flight instructors.
I intended to be professional. Everyone thought I was safe to fly.
I nevertheless thought the FAA would deny my appeal. I was right. [1]
So because I once had clinical depression, I can't get a medical. And yet, yahoos like this get to fly simply because stupidity and malice isn't as well-documented as a history of mental illness. Sigh...
To be clear, I don't think the FAA is at fault here; they didn't know, and they acted fast once he did it. They did a great job.
I know someone going through flight school right now who largely reached the same conclusion: that soon, we'll have next to no inbound new pilots, because Gen Z and Alpha are diagnosed with various mental conditions at high enough rates (in hopes of getting treated, which we should be encouraging) that FAA medicals will become less and less likely.
The FAA needs to get its stuff together in this regard, and quickly.
I was diagnosed with ADHD because I asked my doctor after someone on the internet spotted some symptoms and told me that ADHD medication might help. I don't think it's specifically the newer generations but rather just the present times of having access to information and opinions through the internet. It's not just trendy to have a mental disorder, it's just people are learning about them who otherwise wouldn't have.
Unfortunately in today’s day and age any mental illness is a scarlet letter on your record when it comes to anything government related. Firearm licenses in antigun states are probably the most egregious.
It’s especially troubling with the hype surrounding “mental illness” or “neurodiversity” and popularization of it amongst the youth. It seems to be creating a nation of prohibited persons and second class citizens.
Fly under sport pilot privileges. All you need is a drivers license.
Reach out to West Desert Aviators in Utah. Several young people in tech fly there. If you can find LSA to fly, light sport isn’t as restrictive of a license as it’s made out to be and you don’t have to live in fear of the FAA yanking your medical
Having now lived outside of the US for a period of time, I've come to the grand realization that the US is one of the least 'free' countries out there (and I moved to a communist country!).
My guess is that if you really wanted to find a way to fly, you could, and it wouldn't require moving.
I was able to immigrate to Vietnam and set myself up without bribery. I've been here 10 years.
Mainly it was a matter of learning how to do the paperwork properly. Some people here pay bribes, others refuse to. I won't claim everything here is magically ideal, but as a general rule if you don't put yourself in situations where you need to pay bribes, you won't have to pay them. Mostly simple things like getting a driver's license if you're going to drive, maintaining your vehicle, and registering your current address.
Foreign residents here do have a bit of a reputation for poor compliance on stuff like this and doing everything the shadiest, laziest, and most fragile way possible.
This situation has improved in recent years -- I currently know maybe 4 or 5 other legal immigrants. We are a minority -- your assumptions about the behavior of the average person who moves here from North America are not entirely without merit, it's just not a universal truth.
Anyway I don't mean to argue with you -- just provide a hopefully interesting slice of life from a different part of the world.
Ha! I moved to Vietnam as well. (in Oct 2016). Only back in the US because I was locked out during covid and ended up changing all my plans and making things work here for now.
I love the ability to just pay the cops off, it is the best corruption ever. Who wants to go to court when you can just settle the matter right then and there for a few bucks. I also have a totally valid drivers license (A2) with my picture super imposed on someone else's head.
I don't know what that has to do with things here though. I bet you could go to somewhere like, Mexico (or another country down there), and easily hire someone to let you fly a plane.
Bringing in someone's external details as ammunition from elsewhere on the internet is not allowed on HN. It's a form of personal attack (even if you didn't intend it that way). I'm not saying that such details are necessarily irrelevant, but the cost of allowing them is much higher than any benefit (to wit: this subthread), so please don't.
Being religious and being a nutjob are entirely orthogonal to each other.
I'm religious but you don't see me obsessing about Zion or wishing for countries to be destroyed by natural disasters. I just try to do good where I can.
Edit: I'd like to stress I'm not the one arguing whether you are or are not a nutjob, I'm just saying that you don't have to be religious to be a nutjob, and you don't have to be a nutjob to be religious. Although people who are both, often use religion to justify their nutjobbery, and there's a big movement of people in the US corrupting religion to draw more people into ideas that are nuts. Not all of those have to do with the destruction of the US or bringing about Zion, but some do.
And based on the things you write in the articles others linked to, I think you're a good person at heart; you do focus on the love and selflessness of Christ's message. But that makes wishing for the destruction of a country where people live, stand out even more, because it's so at odds with that love. And apparently this wish is based on questionable ideas about abortion that have been used over the past decades to manipulate well-meaning Christians into supporting increasingly extremist politics. It might be wise to free yourself from that, and instead focus more on just helping people in need, whatever their need might be.
These posts are a pretty far throw from "religious," or even Christian in the basic nondenominational sense that most Americans use the word.
I don't mean this in a judgemental way: if you're like most people (and you, like me, probably are), then you don't have the ability to "seal off" parts of your personality. Whatever part of you drives you to write posts like this is almost certainly also on display when you undergo medical exams.
And I am Christian, but not nondenominational. I have very specific beliefs. Besides, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is still a major church.
To argue that just because I don't believe the same things that most Christians do is a reason to deny me flight is bigoted.
And that wasn't even the reason I was denied. All of the people examining me recommended that I receive a medical. Obviously, this personality of mine was no problem.
Hey dude, I'm a Christian too. However, you gotta realize that it's extremism that leads people to want to fly planes into buildings, something the FAA might be inclined to care a bit about.
Also, mix religious extremism with quips like "the US must die", and you've got a pretty good explanation for why your application might have been denied.
Also, extremism like this is not the best way to lead new people to Christ, bro. Jesus didn't care about whose face was on the denarius.
> Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets. [1]
That's the kind of dying I'm talking about. Not extremist.
That blog post is saying that the US is like Sodom and Gomorrha: there's a lot of evil, and God will eventually destroy it. I'm not saying it's our job to. Absolutely not.
The distinction between "God will destroy the US" and "my interpretation of my religious group must destroy the US" is not an appreciable one from the US government's perspective, particularly when you consider that religious people tend to justify their actions in the name of their god.
Which are fair points, including the one about "religious" people justifying their actions, for which I added a note to my post that says this:
> Edit 2023-05-11: After confusion on Hacker News, I want to clarify the previous statement.
> I believe that the United States must die, but I believe that God alone must do it by natural disaster, as with what happened with Sodom and Gomorrha. It is not for any individual or group to do, especially not the Latter-day Saints.
> > We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly;
does adding a caveat to a wish for national destruction that it should be a natural disaster rather than a human group so as to avoid personal retribution for the comment seem like a Christian thing to do?
Keep in mind that you're not wishing for less suffering during the calamity. You're not wishing for those that are innocent to be spared. You're not wishing for mercy.
You're wishing for a cataclysm to destroy your enemies on a national level, and you don't want any guff for the opinion.
None of these things strike me as something Jesus Christ would do.
Your criticism is valid because my wording was bad. I do not wish for national destruction, actually.
As I said somewhere in this thread, my communication skills are not good; I tend toward strong statements, too strong. My wife has worked on helping me overcome that, and I am better than I was two years ago when I wrote that post.
I've added a note to the post addressing your criticism. See another one of my replies to one of your comments.
If you believe something different from most Christians, at what point does that stop being a “Christian” belief? I think any arbitrary belief could be labeled “Christian” via this logic?
Others don't call me Christian because I don't believe in the Nicene Creed.
I call myself Christian because I try to follow Jesus Christ in my everyday life.
Of course, Christ has great communication skills. I do not, as you can see from this thread. This is just one way in which I suck as a disciple of Christ.
Actually, Gavin, I think you're an excellent writer, actually, and I rather enjoyed your articles. I hope you'll keep posting.
It's just that... the US government, OSB and FBI agents, whoever is handling your application... They don't really have a sense of nuance when doing background investigations, nor should they be expected to have the resources to do so.
I don't mean to shit on your dream of flying commercially, in fact I hope you achieve it. I really just pointed out what I saw, something that might be a "code smell" type red flag that could lead to bias in the FAA's selection process, consciously or not.
I hope that my initial comment wasn't too crass, but sometimes people need to hear what they need to hear.
I see. I apologize. I didn't understand at first. woodruffw helped me understand that that was your purpose.
I added a note to that post that says this:
> Edit 2023-05-11: After confusion on Hacker News, I want to clarify the previous statement.
> I believe that the United States must die, but I believe that God alone must do it by natural disaster, as with what happened with Sodom and Gomorrha. It is not for any individual or group to do, especially not the Latter-day Saints.
> > We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly;
> > – D&C 134:5 [1]
I hope that fixes the problem.
I apologize. I acted the way I did because I have people grab random posts and say that they can ignore me because I'm religious and then rail on me, forcing me to defend my faith. This felt a bit like that, but I was obviously wrong about that feeling.
I think this problem is fairly interesting. Basically religious language has become extremely non-operationalized. “God will destroy X” has always been a metaphor for X not working long term and collapsing on its own. “God” is just a way to frame parts of reality that we don’t understand, it is a manner of speaking that has fallen out of mainstream usage. It’s weird how we have lost sight of this for the most part. Why is everyone so literal?
>Every civilization must die at some point. What's wrong with hoping for something that is even better?
the wording on your blog doesn't describe the hope that the replacement is better, it describes the hope that the country fails 'because it is full of sin' -- it is dishonest to come to HN and pretend that the way it is worded is altruistic, it's not -- it's vengeful; you even provide motive for your wishes of national defeat : 'abortion is evil, so..'.
Calling yourself a patriot first doesn't somehow change the premise; you're wishing for the failure of a nation because you disagree with their policies.
>By the way, I did not provide my blog to the application, so it should have had no bearing on it.
one could argue that the things that are NOT provided are likely more important for professionals to use to gauge 'mental hygiene'.
You know, all that said -- I agree with a lot of your technical beliefs. I think the Rust foundation has their head up their ass too, for example.
It's my personal wish that I could read a blog that had your technical stuff in it without also having to expose myself to the rest of your personality.
I don't want the US to be defeated. I do not want to go through the period of war of natural disaster that would require. I would be a masochist if I was truly wishing for that to happen.
What I'm saying there is that it will happen unless we get our act together. But we won't.
My wording has always defaulted to too strong. My wife has spent years making me more diplomatic, and that post was written two years ago. I'm much better now.
If you want to read just the technical portion of my blog without my personal stuff, there's actually a way to do it. Go to https://gavinhoward.com/categories/ , and you'll see that each category has its own Atom feed. Just subscribe to only the tech ones.
You're allowed to rant about whatever you like. What you're not allowed to do is fly airplanes or helicopters without the FAA's sign-off.
Look, I personally think you're probably a normal and well-adjusted person, or at least close enough that it's not dangerous for you to be allowed to fly. But all neurotypical humans judge each other based on subjective, possibly unfair pattern-matching at least as much, if not more, than what they say or do. Your blog, subjectively, has an unhinged vibe; it's not fair but it's true. You are not going to be able to prevent people from reading it and thinking "this pattern-matches the type of person who might commit terrorist acts with an airplane" (ironclad devotion to uncommon belief systems, long screeds against the government and mainstream society, etc).
However, my blog was not part of the appeal material sent to the FAA, and they also told me the reason they rejected me, which had to do with long-standing unofficial policies that required me to jump through more hoops.
I could have gotten a medical, but felt the cost to my marriage would not be worth it.
Obviously something, to some people, when it takes this form (a better question would be "what's wrong with this type of religiosity"), seeing as how multiple people mentioned it. Are you actually hoping to find out why, though?
Most people in this thread are not trying to pressure you out of your beliefs, but trying to explain why the FAA might have a problem with how you choose to express them.
I agree that strongly held beliefs should be occasionally challenged.
I also think that there are two reasons why people try to pressure me, one which is not my fault, and another which is.
First, it's not my fault that my beliefs are not fashionable. This will always be the case. I tend to ignore these ones because people attack me personally.
Second, it is my fault when I have bad wording, such as your correct claim that my wording makes it seem like I'm wishing bad things on this country. These criticisms I take seriously and try to fix. For example, I added the following note to the post due to your criticism:
> Edit 12 May 2023: After confusion on Hacker News, I want to clarify something that I am not wishing for the United States to die; I do not want to go through that upheaval. I am wishing no ill will against the United States, just like Isaiah wished no ill will against the Kingdom of Judah when he prophesied that Assyria would invade and almost conquer Jerusalem or that the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem.
> Instead, I wish the United States could slowly evolve into something better.
> What I mean by this post is that the United States is not evolving the right direction, and as a result, it will not evolve into something better, but it will get worse until disaster strikes.
Yes, I believe that they didn't because they told my AME the exact reason they wouldn't let me fly: they actually would if I would jump through some more hoops that I considered too costly to my marriage.
They actually would have given me a medical if I had jumped through those hoops.
I won't say what those hoops are just in case it would not be good for me to say, but the FAA was willing to let me fly.
I think what people are objecting to is the "rise in its place" narrative.
It's one thing to say "I'd like to move away to another place with more like-minded people" or even "I'd like to influence my country to align better with my own values". Great. Those are both pretty uncontroversial, non-extremist opinions. It's a whole other kettle of fish to believe "My country/city should be replaced by one composed of exclusively like-minded people." Particularly problematic if by like-minded people, you mean followers of a particular religion.
There's really nothing in the guidelines about that. The closest is: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." In the comment you replied to, I wasn't doing battle, I was correcting a misconception. That should help curiosity and discourage flamebait.
I have been very careful to not personally attack anyone that attacked me in this thread so as to not create a battle. And it worked; I received valid criticisms, did something about them, and did my best to cool the thread down by myself because I didn't see you doing anything about it. (Which I get; you're busy.)
Dan, do you really want me to sit by while people attack me and you do nothing for nigh on a day? If so, I reserve the right to defend myself if I do it carefully, and I did.
But it seems that controversy just seems to follow me even if I never allude to anything controversial, so my very existence on this website seems to "feed this." Because of that, you and Hacker News may be better off banning me. If you do, please ban me fully; there's no reason to do a shadowban because I'll accept your decision gracefull and won't come back with different accounts.
This thread turned into a miserable religious flamewar. Absolutely you should not be feeding that.
I scolded the people who attacked you worse than I scolded you, but you're also responsible for taking this thread way offtopic and into flamewar hell.
There are other relevant guidelines, including "Eschew flamebait" and "Avoid generic tangents."
I don't want to ban you, I just want you to follow HN's rules the same way we want everyone else to. It's nothing personal.
Your comment broke the site guidelines either way. If it helps all, I can rephrase the moderation reply like this: Please stop calling names and/or posting flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how nuts something is or you feel it is.
I don't think this distinction makes much difference in this case. It's clear which person people thought was the "religious zealot" and were ganging up on. He also broke the site guidelines badly, of course.
He also crash landed into Los Padres National Park. He's lucky he didn't start a forest fire. The area is very dry and forest fires are not uncommon around there.
> Why? In all, the original crime is equivalent to dumping a big piece of trash in the forest
It's a bit more serious than that. It worked out to not harm anyone or do large-scale damages (fire, destruction, etc) this time, but it was still wildly dangerous and demonstrated a complete lack and disregard for aviation safety and rules.
A more apt comparison would be throwing a table off the Empire State Building, and it just so happened to not hit anything below.
I'm reading about the "extensive planning enhancement" here on comments and I'm wondering why that would've got him more prison time... If he picked a time where there was no one and a spot to crash the plane where it wouldn't have started a fire (he probably didn't want to kill anyone), wouldn't it have been a less harmful act?
I'm just saying, the "potential to cause harm" is vague here, it could be equivalent to throwing down a table off the Empire State Building according to careful physics calculations and precisely avoid killing anybody. It's still harmful (because the calculations can be incorrect), but less so.
(honestly had he not destroyed the evidence and made the plea that he constructed the crash in a way that was designed not to harm anyone, and it ended up not harming anyone, I suspect he might've gotten a lower sentence)
> If he picked a time where there was no one and a spot to crash the plane where it wouldn't have started a fire (he probably didn't want to kill anyone), wouldn't it have been a less harmful act?
No, because it was/is not possible for him to have made that conclusion from the air prior to jumping out of his aircraft - no matter the level of google maps or even in-person planning.
After he left the aircraft, he had no control over where it crashed, and had no way of knowing it wouldn't land on some hiker, hunter, animal, whatever... or cause a fire.
We cannot have a system were the public is afraid airplanes might just drop out of the sky suddenly. The rules are there for very good reasons, and this guy broke darn near all of them.
And what for? Youtube clicks? No, that's not acceptable.
> (honestly had he not destroyed the evidence and made the plea that he constructed the crash in a way that was designed not to harm anyone, and it ended up not harming anyone, I suspect he might've gotten a lower sentence)
No, because the regulator is not going to see it as innocent. This is a highly trained aviator - as are all aviators, and he certainly knew how dangerous this could have been. He had no clearances with ATC/FAA to have other aircraft avoid the area, or emergency services on ready in case something went wrong.
We allow acrobatics, stunts, and yes even crashes on purpose (movies or whatever) under tightly controlled circumstances where everyone knows what is going on. That was not the case here... this guy just decided to do it all on his own.
Aviation is a highly professional community - even at the amateur level - and for very good reasons.
Since it's a plea deal I wouldn't expect anywhere near the maximum. Additionally, it looks like a fine and/or prison. Since the goal was to make money on a YouTube video, I could see the plea being more on the fine side, with little or no prison.
"shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both."
How is it fair to get more than actual murderers? I get that this is "up to 20 years" but I don't see how more than a few months for a victimless crime would be fair.
Yes it could have been worse, but he deliberately crashed in a desert and it wasn't actually worse. So let's judge him by what happened, not by what could have happened.
You don't get punished for murders you didn't commit even when drunk driving. Actually, you usually don't even go to prison for drunk driving if you haven't hurt anyone, so if anything it proves my point.
So the argument that I keep seeing in this thread that it could've led to death so he deserves to get his life ruined by a 20 years sentence or whatever doesn't make sense to me
Feels overly harsh considering no one was hurt. Send him to jail for a year for obstructing the investigation. It’s not like he’s going to do this again.
It's popular in news articles to report the maximum possible sentence for a crime, but this isn't particularly informative. The federal sentencing guidelines usually give a more clear picture, and my -very much not a lawyer much less a federal criminal defense attorney- quick skim suggests he's looking at more like 1-3 years. Which is closer to your gut reaction. The details will depend also on what kind of plea bargain he negotiated, which we'll find out at sentencing.
But they could have been hurt, especially if he kicked off a wildfire or landed on some unsuspecting party.
I mean, we charge people for hiring a hitman, or shooting at someone and missing, even though in both cases nobody is necessarily harmed. 20 years may be excessive, but I'm not sure 'was anyone actually hurt' is a good sentencing guideline either.
That's a very fair point. I guess the question then is how we should treat recklessness with potential to harm, as there definitely should be a deterrent for that. But perhaps not as much as my examples.
We treat drunk drivers harshly, even if they harmed no one.
The potential for harm, body and property, combined with the complete disregard for safety (aviation and otherwise) and federal aviation laws/regulations, from someone who had a high level of training (as required for all private pilots) makes it really hard to excuse.
I mean, most people are not interested in doing crimes, no matter the sentence. Do you expect someone to say, "cool, only one year for burglary, what a steal!"
20 years is outrageous and very unlikely given his probable experience and making sure no one would be hurt. There is a vast difference in crashing an airplane over a populated area, intentionally wanting to cause harm, and it being accident. Afaik this area is not even populated.
If such a thing happened by accident, you should not get 20 years. If you did so intentionally wanting to cause harm, them perhaps you should get 20+ years, because that would be an act of terrorism. If someone got killed, you should probably not get your freedom back.
Journalists need to always mind the context and emphasize the likelihood of what will be the outcome. It is not really truthful to bluntly state he faces 20 years. If he were to actually get 20, the legal system would obviously be severely flawed. There are murderers that get 20 ffs.
He has agreed to plead guilty to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, a crime that carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
I find the context very clear. The writer did a superb job.
I think you may need to familiarise yourself with US federal sentencing guidelines. Unlike being found guilty of breaking state laws, where many state judges will be endowed with discretionary authority to impose a sentence within a wide range and reflecting the facts found/pleaded, my man is pleading to a federal crime involving defrauding the US government and federal judges are largely beholden to a matrix of crime/sentence with a teeny bit of wiggle room for facts and circumstances.
No, it was a stupid stunt for profit (he made a significant amount of money from his video), a dangerous one. Flying is highly regulated for obvious reasons, he should have done his research before thinking it was a good idea to do that just to get views.
> Journalists need to always mind the context and emphasize the likelihood of what will be the outcome.
I’d really suggest you read the article, which offers a clear explanation of the facts and crimes he committed. Not sure which journalists you’re ranting about?
International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
You can't just call anything terrorism from a legal standpoint, though many try.
Unfortunately not everyone agrees with the FBI's definition of terrorism. The FBI's definition of International terrorism depends on a list of organizations more-or-less arbitrarily assembled by politicians. Their definition of domestic terrorism is even looser.
Basically, both definitions are "violent criminal acts [waffle]". That definition is circular, because terrorism is criminal.
The word should be banned from newspapers and from political and legal discourse. Broadly speaking, it means "political activities of which we disapprove".
Someone crashing a plane on purpose doesn't amount to terrorism - there would need to be a political motivation as well.
Edit: Also the post says up to 20 years .. not sure why you've become fixated on it being simply 20. People dropping planes out of the sky for likes need to be made an example of imo, and I personally would be happy to see him locked up for life as a deterrent to others. The lengths people are going to for likes is frightening.
Deterrence doesn't work, if it did, there would be no drug use (or insert any other crime really, you should see our incarceration statistics) in the US. Why do people still think this?
The biggest problem with deterrence is it relies on people not thinking they won't get caught. Everyone thinks they won't get caught.
I just hope you have absolutely no power in this world. You shouldnt have with your total lack of empathy and common sense. Locking an annoying guy away for life for a stupid prank... Nobody got hurt. And you're not even alone and don't even get downvoted like crazy. American society sure is fucked up.
My empathy is with the people who have their lives destroyed by reckless idiots pulling these "stupid prank"s for likes.. common sense says society doesn't appreciate this nonsense so deterrent is the only way to deal with it - but if you have as better idea I'm sure myself and the world are listening.
Nobody had their life destroyed, except maybe the idiot youtuber. He already paid with all the ridicule he's getting. That is deterrent enough. It's not like "faking plane crashes for likes" is common at all. You're really not making any sense.
Well, his plane is broken too. Again, there has not been any damage to anyone. Of course his pilot license should be revoked. But jail time? I'm pretty sure he won't repeat that stupidity, so why lock him away. People in jail cost money. And if they get out they are more likely to go back due to stigmatization and questionable connections made in jail. You're not even doing yourself a favor.
By that logic, we should shoot on sight for over speeding a car or drunk driving. I hope you know how many people die in automobile accident every day.
1) attached multiple cameras to the craft (not illegal but suspect)
2) Wearing a sports parachute (there uncomfortable as hell and he never wore any chute on any other flight)
3) opened the side door before claiming any engine failure.
4) made no attempt to restart engine
5) made no attempt to find a safe landing spot even though there were multiple landing areas in easy gliding distance
6) jumped out of the plan with a selfie stick which is not normal behaviour during a crisis .
7) Made his way to the wreck and took all the cameras
8) had the wreck disposed of before contact the authorities .
9) made no attempt to communicate on emergency frequency
None of which deals with the fact he had fire extinguishers strapped to his legs since that not technically illegal or the deliberate crashing of his plane into national reserve.