Two pilots, two very different paths

Two pilots walked very different paths in 2021.

Trevor Jacob, according to his Wikipedia page, is a “former aircraft pilot.”

He’s also an extreme sports athlete who competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where he finished 9th in snowboard cross.

Jacob has a few other sports accolades, but will most likely be best known for something unrelated to extreme sports. He’s the guy who staged an aircraft crash to boost views on his YouTube channel.

Mike Bartholomew does not have a Wikipedia page.

He is an ag pilot from Iowa and had flown 26 straight seasons, until cancer sidelined him for the 2021 season.

One path

• Jacob’s “crash” occurred Nov. 24, 2021.
• He reported the accident to the NTSB on Nov. 26 and was advised to preserve the aircraft and crash scene.
• However, he went to the crash scene on Dec. 10, recovered the aircraft, and ultimately cut it up and discarded the pieces over the following days.
• Jacob uploaded his video, “I Crashed My Airplane,” to YouTube on Dec. 23.

In the weeks following the plane crash, Jacob lied to investigators that he did not know the wreckage’s location, according to a plea agreement with the Department of Justice.

Jacob further admitted he lied to federal investigators when he submitted an aircraft accident incident report that falsely indicated that the aircraft experienced a full loss of power approximately 35 minutes after takeoff. Jacob also lied to an FAA aviation safety inspector when he said the airplane’s engine had quit and, because he could not identify any safe landing options, he parachuted out of the plane.

Another path

• In 2020, a lump on Mike’s neck turned out to be a harmless and slow-growing lipoma.
• Then, in early 2021, a second lump on Mike’s neck was determined to be lymphoma. Cancer.
• Chemotherapy was followed by painful side effects.
• Mike sat out the 2021 spray season.

“Mike had to voluntarily surrender his medical certificate and could no longer fly while he was being treated for lymphoma cancer,” wrote Jay Calleja in the Spring 2023 edition of Agricultural Aviation magazine.

After beating cancer, it was a grueling 11-month effort to return his 2nd class medical to his wallet.

Which path to follow?

In Jacob’s case, if you perform a Google search for “Trevor Jacob,” scores of links and images on the first page of results will connect you to the now well-known story of a fraudulent crash and the effort taken to cover it up — all just to boost viewership of his YouTube channel.

Conversely, if you search Google for “Mike Bartholomew” you will see lots of links to different people by the same name. None of them appear, to me, to be the guy I am referring to.

May I recommend we all turn off the Jacob story and point a web browser to bit.ly/3M20C5n (the link to the story in Agricultural Aviation magazine) so you can read the inspiring story of a fellow pilot who temporarily lost access to the cockpit, only to return after winning two battles: The first with cancer, the second with the FAA.

Mike’s story is inspiring and is the type of story that should get much more attention.