Yeah, this one seemed really silly. There is even a large open field at 5:36 pretty close to where he chose to "crash" land. Maybe not completely level, but as you said, many other options.
Do you just try and glide it out and land? That's what I would imagine. What even would be the situation where you would bail?
Bailing sounds like more of a military thing to me. _Or_ a fire?
1. Fly: Trim the airplane for best glide speed (that is the speed that will let you travel the farthest before hitting the ground), which is a value you should have memorized. And don't forget to keep minding the stick and rudder - any unnecessary turns or aileron/rudder miscoordination costs you energy, and that means less time and less distance.
2. Find: Find the best place to put down the plane, and start maneuvering there. A road. A field. A river bed. Or even an airport; at cruising altitude there's one in gliding distance more often than you might think.
3. Fix: Try to get the engine running again. The engine can fail in a way the pilot is hopeless to get it running again, but more often by adjusting the throttle or mixture you'll be able to get it started again (it might have even been mismanagement of those things that caused it to fail - I accidentally turned the fuel off once).
Note that "call mayday" isn't even on that list. Its not like ATC is going to run out and catch you. While on a cross country VFR flight, you ought to have the radio tuned to a center controller, and have flight following so they know which blip on the radar is you. And if you don't do that, you ought to have the radio tuned to guard (the emergency frequency). And then when the "fix" step isn't working out, I would make a quick "MAYDAY MAYDAY MADAY, Center, $CALLSIGN, has an engine out, one on board, forced landing in a river bed to my east." But many people don't do any of those things. And for most of the airspace out there, you're not even required to have a radio, and planes of that vintage often don't.
And while lots of that video is fishy, I'm not reading much into his lack of communication. If I happened to be an experienced skydiver wearing a parachute, and my radio wasn't already tuned to a frequency where someone would be listening, in a panic I might skip talking to anybody in favor of getting out of the airplane while I still had enough altitude to safely deploy the chute.
Also known as A, B, C (Airspeed, Best landing field, Checks).
Can add D, E (Declare emergency, prepare Exit).
Here's a good take on what he could have done - gliding back to those fields clearly visible in the rear right quarter at the time of the "failure".
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VXaLiB70glE&feature=youtu.be
Author (not myself) also shows a simulated landing on the riverbeds below - heck, the 1940 Taylorcraft nearly landed there by itself! AFAIK the plane was designed to land off road, with a stall speed barely over 61km/h - it can land on a proverbial dime.
What a waste of a perfectly good aircraft.
Somehow the plane then ends up losing altitude VERY quickly before leveling off again, and by chance circling back directly underneath the pilot in the process. It could theoretically happen, but also seems ridiculous when you put it in context.
And transponders are also mandatory in any aircraft at least here in Europe. Even gliders or microlights.
But perhaps this works differently in the US I guess.
Here uncontrolled fields are also common but you'd still call local traffic. And transponders are always mandatory. But aviation is not as commonplace as in the US.
Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with Lompoc. That looks like class echo airspace in which a radio is not required. Apparently the airport's control tower only operates part time. Still, with nearby population centers, restricted air over military bases, possible gliders and skydivers in the area, even oil wells relatively close, it looks like a particularly foolish place to turn an aircraft into an unguided missile by jumping out of it.
Sources: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-02-2021/PDFs/Los_Angeles.p... which includes a legend, faster version here: https://skyvector.com/?ll=34.665619444,-120.467502778&chart=....
And notifying local traffic (on CTAF) at uncontrolled airports is recommended, but not required.
This is quite common in the US, especially in small towns/rural areas.
Also worth noting that in a life-threatening emergency you have wide, wide discretion when it comes to putting her down. Fields, Roads, Riverbed, pretty much anything that's remotely flat is fair game.
We were just philosophising whether he had one or not.
That said, I see a lot of smoking guns:
1. He doesn't do any of the normal engine-out procedures. In particular, he does not turn the plane. He makes no attempt to try to find a safe landing site, which was pretty clearly available on the dry river bed. The plane he was flying is specifically designed to land in places like that. Even if he wasn't able to land, turning around would have placed him closer to civilization before he bailed out, but he clearly didn't even try.
2. His reaction when the engine quits is very heavy on profanities and lamenting the direness of the situation, and completely devoid of troubleshooting or planning the best course of action. Both of his hands can be seen on the yoke, so he's not trimming for best glide, checking the mags, checking the fuel selector. At best he is a completely incompetent pilot.
3. He is an accomplished skydiver flying a controllable skydiving chute (not an emergency chute). He could have put that chute down wherever he chose, but instead of landing on clear flat terrain (in the riverbed) he chose to land in the brush on the mountainside. That was either the most incredibly stupid decision anyone has ever made in an emergency situation, or part of a deliberate plan. I don't see any other possibilities.
4. The fact that he's able to get a shot of the plane flying below him also looks mighty hinky. He spent a lot of time in free-fall. For the plane to end up underneath him like that would be an incredible coincidence. Indeed, being able to hike to the crash site is mighty suspicious, even leaving aside the highly questionable decision-making required to even attempt it.
[UPDATE]
Also this video [1] where he spends a day at an airport trying to scam a free flight off someone by presenting himself as someone who has never had the opportunity to fly despite the fact that he is himself a pilot. This indicates that it is very much in character for him to try to deceive people for the sake of YT views.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWoEv0t5xGc