Jacob said in a statement in January that he flew that day to scatter the ashes of his best friend, Johnny Strange, over the top of a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. mr. Strange died in 2015 while BASE jumping, an extreme sport in which people skydive from a solid object or structure, such as a cliff.
In the video, Mr. Jacob unleashes a wave of expletives as the propeller stops spinning. He opens the door of the plane and jumps out with a parachute, exiting the plane as he descends into the forest, a selfie stick in hand to capture everything.
“I’m just so glad I’m still alive,” he says after landing in a thorny bush. He documented his walk through the woods, which, he says in the video, lasted at least six hours until a farmer found him at dusk. He had previously found the wrecked, mangled plane in a thicket of dried shrubs.
Almost immediately after he posted the video on December 24, viewers and aviation experts online expressed doubts about his portrayal of the crash. It was orchestrated, they claimed, for opinions and likes, and several steps Mr. Jacob took, like wearing a parachute in the first place, were evidence of a premeditated publicity stunt.
Mr. Jacob has disabled comments for the video.
The FAA agreed with the parachute in its letter, which was released in response to a request from DailyExpertNews, pointing to other revealing details officials discovered during an investigation.
“On this flight, you opened the left-hand driver’s door before claiming the engine had failed,” the FAA wrote.
Before jumping off the plane, the agency said, Mr. Jacob made no attempt to contact air traffic control on the emergency frequency, did not attempt to restart the engine by increasing airflow over the propeller, and failed to make a find a place to land safely, “even though there were multiple areas within the glide range where you could have landed safely.”