US officials: YouTuber who staged plane crash faces up to 20 years jail

The dramatic footage shows Jacob, 29, ejecting from the single engine plane – selfie-stick in hand – and parachuting into the dense vegetation of the Los Padres National Forest. — Screengrab from YouTube/@TrevorJacob

LOS ANGELES: A YouTuber pilot who bailed out midair and deliberately sent his plane crashing into the ground to bolster viewing numbers on his channel could be jailed for up to 20 years, US authorities said on May 11.

In a video seen by nearly three million people and entitled “I crashed my airplane”, Trevor Jacob appears to experience engine trouble while flying over southern California in November 2021.