negative publicity is never good.
The US is a big country with a lot of ‘news’ and also a lot of pilots active and inactive who have perspective on flying and how it’s done. This might get a little attention for a little while among pilots specifically, mainly for the entertainment value, otherwise this is a very low gain event.
I just got back from flying, an hour of hood work today which is highly unusual for me. That’s more entertaining for me, although I do find myself writing this…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The public does not necessarily understand why someone gets convicted, so they often take the reason which is most convenient to slag off against people or groups or people, when the actual reason is quite different.To make the case, a very large percentage of people STILL to this day believe that Bill Clinton was prosecuted because he did what he did with an intern in the WH.
Only that is wrong. They tried to impeach him for perjury and obstruction of justice.
This guy gets sentenced for tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice.
But you bet that a large percentage of the people who follow this will understand that. They will assume the trial is about his behaviour as a pilot or because he did something against the law as a youtuber. So the public opinion may well turn against GA or youtubers in general.
Lots of things aren’t illegal, but that’s not to say they are “socially acceptable” for certain persons in certain circumstances. Jumping out of a plane, making it look like an accident, then trying to fool the FAA and investigators isn’t normally what is seen as acceptable behavior for a pilot. But, you can only be convicted for breaking the law. The same goes for Clinton. In this case it is not clear to me what other pilot find wrong with this. Is it the act of jumping out of a plane? Is it the attempt of making it look like an accident? Is it because he did it to get clicks on his youtube channel? Is it because he displays a “low moral standard” as a pilot? Is it because he shows poor airmanship? Is it because he tried to fool investigators? It could be any or several of those things, I don’t know which, but it’s also something more. IMO that extra is that many PPL pilots like to be associated with types like Sully and not with this clown who jumps out of planes for clicks on youtube. I admire Sully as much as anyone else, but at the same time we shouldn’t dismiss the fact that being Captain of the ship and responsible for 100s of people IS serios business, while we are doing this for fun. I think most GA pilot feels that this event is pretty much irrelevant for them, because most will never do such a thing (unless it was for real 
)
Public opinion is a very strange thing. Whenever some guy or girl dies in a base jumping accident, there is a surge of new people wanting to try skydiving/base jumping or even paragliding.
It is hitting the mainstream press that he has been sentenced to six months in federal prison
I’m just happy this stupid kid didn’t injure himself or anyone else. Just a total waste from start to finish. “I’m out of ideas of what to build, so let me destroy something!”
LeSving wrote:
In this case it is not clear to me what other pilot find wrong with this.
In conflict with law are two things: First, he removed the plane wreck before investigation started and thus hindered the authorities. Second, he risked a bush fire and environmental pollution without it being totally unavoidable (such as in case of a true failure). Whether the third is ok regarding the law I don’t know, that is he left a functioning aircraft in the air without pilot, capable of hurting anyone. This being in a totally deserted region could even be regarded as “only reckless”.
The verdict is surprisingly well in line with my personal opinion. This egregious behaviour shouldn’t and couldn’t go unpunished, but anything beyond the six months is just too much. I just hope they close the lid on this.
But do note he didn’t get time for crashing the plane, he got time for perverting the course of justice. (Had he not lied he would have probably got off with just a licence suspension/revocation).
I would bot be so sure about that – when there is a set of crimes to be prosecuted, sometimes prosecutors pick the “slam-dunk” one and leave the rest if they think the penalty will be enough, especially if it the offence with the higher potential penalty.
If he hadn’t covered it up, they might still have chosen to prosecute the act itself, but that would have been much harder.
Crashing a plane per se is not a crime. But he could have been convicted for endangering the lives of others and endangering preserved / natural areas (just like intentionally starting a fire anywhere is criminal).
License revocation (and life-long licence ban) is not under the federal justice’s jurisdiction as crimes are, it’s the under the FAA’s. And the rule he violated there is quite different, it’s the one stating that the PIC must control the plane at every instant and ensure the safety of the flight (with some exceptions, that are also subject to rules, none of which apply here). On an even less judiciary note, the guy also demonstrated poor airmanship (because he intended to crash the plane, but still), as he had a lot of height to find a spot to land even without an engine. At least he should have tried. @LeSving I believe these last two aspects make the whole thing specifically shocking to pilots.
The guy has posted a video on his channel explaining that he’s recently regained his pilot certificate.
The rest of the video indicates a level of unbridled narcissism that’s amazing. My rather unsettling thought is that except for the felony on his record the guy will likely be very successful in life – he never stops his pitch and people will buy it. Or perhaps the exact opposite – it seems to be one or the other with sociopaths but they never change their attitude regardless.
The legal case and jail time are just the churning of bureaucracy after something that did no harm regardless of its stupidity. As a result the only thing they could find to prosecute successfully was obstruction of their process, a process which found nothing else that couldn’t be beaten. As I guessed in Post 126 he got six months.
