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Plenty of previous discussion on HN, but IMHO the most interesting one was the early dissection of whether or not the crash was intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29729307
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not disagreeing. Just pushing back on cover-ups being rational. In many cases, the cover-up wasn't worth it. "Full revelation of the underlying bad act" would have been utterly survivable, even taking into account the odds of getting away with no consequence.
Guess some people like to play the odds. Rather than take 50% damage, they choose to gamble between 0% damage (cover up successful) and 100% damage (cover up failed and isn’t survivable) - they are equivalent in terms of expected value.
Just because there are only two possible outcomes doesn't mean that they are equiprobable. Not all coin tosses use a "fair" coin.
He deserves a much longer sentence for this. There is so much risk of killing someone or damaging property. Even in a remote area you cannot be sure there is nothing below or that you won’t start a forest fire. I’ve seen less bad crimes get years.
There are things that shouldn't have been crimes at all ruin people's lives. I'm not saying this guy deserves to lose everything, but I agree that less than one year isn't justice considering all the harm he did and could have caused.
He deserves a much longer sentence for this. There is so much risk of killing someone or damaging property. Even in a remote area you cannot be sure there is nothing below or that you won’t start a forest fire. I’ve seen less bad crimes get years.
Critically, he is not going to jail for intentionally crashing the plane. He is being jailed "for obstructing a federal investigation by deliberately destroying the wreckage of an airplane." Had he cooperated, it's plausible to see him getting away with a license revocation and fine. Instead he did this: "In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location.…
He deserves a much longer sentence for this. There is so much risk of killing someone or damaging property. Even in a remote area you cannot be sure there is nothing below or that you won’t start a forest fire. I’ve seen less bad crimes get years.
Exactly. Lotta people still in jail for marijuana for example.
I followed this whole story closely and his behavior was just outrageous every step dog the way culminating in actually lying to investigators and destroying evidence of a crime.
It went far beyond conduct that is unbecoming of a licensed pilot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note, however, that this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated. It means that the federal prosecutor decided that the act of obstruction would be easier to prove, since the intentional nature of those acts is much more self-evident.
> [...]this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated[...] If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional? They'd almost certainly have revoked his license to ever fly again, but filming everything you're doing isn't illegal. Nor is wearing a parachute because you know you're a crappy pilot that'll bail out at the fi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note, however, that this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated. It means that the federal prosecutor decided that the act of obstruction would be easier to prove, since the intentional nature of those acts is much more self-evident.
> [...]this doesn't mean that he would have gotten away with it if he'd cooperated[...] If he'd stuck to the story that he just had an engine mishap would they have been able to prove that it was intentional? They'd almost certainly have revoked his license to ever fly again, but filming everything you're doing isn't illegal. Nor is wearing a parachute because you know you're a crappy pilot that'll bail out at the fi…
The engine didn't just stop producing power, that would leave typically the propeller spinning, windmilling in the air. (unless the engine seized, but he was faking fuel starvation)
He put a bunch of effort into making sure the propeller actually stopped spinning, I think he had to actually reduce speed; Just so that your average YouTube viewer could clearly see the engine had stopped.