A US court has sentenced a 30-year-old YouTuber, Trevor Jacob, to six months in prison for deliberately crashing his plane.

Trevor, the court found, crashed his plane to get more views for a YouTube channel. But he lied to the United States investigators about it.

Jacob who left Santa Barbara, California airport on a solo flight in November 2021, had cameras mounted on his plane.

According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California he “did not intend to reach his destination, but instead planned to eject from his aircraft during the flight and video himself parachuting to the ground and his airplane as it descended and crashed.”

After the plane crashed into the Los Padres National Forest 35 minutes after take-off, Jacob hiked to the site and recovered the footage.

He afterward uploaded the footage to YouTube. He titled it, “I crashed my airplane”. The footage also contained a promotion for a wallet company, according to the prosecutors. The video of the crash is said to have been viewed almost three million times.

Jacob had lied that it was an accident even as he ejected himself with a parachute. He had selfie sticks with him as he left the plane.

He later pleaded guilty to one felony count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation. But he said he filmed the video as part of a product sponsorship deal.

US prosecutors said he “most likely committed this offence to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain. “Nevertheless, this type of ‘daredevil’ conduct cannot be tolerated”.