What a few airheads.
A pilot is facing backlash online after pulling a controversial “zero gravity” prank on several female passengers, as seen in an Instagram video with 45 million views.
“Zero gravity is protected and a fun style of thing to do with friends when done appropriately,” pilot and flying instructor John Robert Nelson wrote within the clip’s caption.
The flyboy usually posts clips detailing his time within the friendly skies for his over 100,000 followers on Instagram.
For his latest stunt, Nelson decided to seemingly punk two female passengers by making them float in flight.
Within the footage, the 2 headset-sporting gal pals are seen seemingly sleeping without seatbelts behind a small aircraft.
Unexpectedly, the jokester maneuvers the plane such that the pair rise upwards out of their seats, and hit the jet’s ceiling a la the floating scene in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
The clip concludes with the 2 women floating back all the way down to their seats while laughing uproariously over their ridiculous predicament.
For the uninitiated, Zero-G environments are created when pilots fly a plane in a parabolic arc, by which they point the nose of the plane upward after which downward after reaching a certain altitude.
When the plane hits the central peak of the parabola, passengers experience weightlessness for around 20 seconds, much like an astronaut in space.
Nelson insisted within the clip’s caption that the levitation trick was “fun” and “protected” and urged people to follow him in the event that they desired to see “more people getting floated.”
Unnecessary to say, the Instagram-verse felt like he didn’t appreciate the gravity of subjecting passengers to a Zero-G environment.
“No seatbelts in a plane is definitely insane,” said one commenter.
One other listed potential mishaps that might occur as a consequence of the prank, which they claimed included every part from head injuries to inadvertently interfering with the flight controls should the passengers fly to the front.
“Stuff pilots do for attention that could make the remainder of us look silly if something bad happens,” the critic fumed.
Nevertheless, many viewers felt that the stunt was clearly fake and that so-called victims were in on it.
“So many Karen ‘pilots’ in here,” scoffed one. “Not dangerous and staged. They knew it was coming. Just having a bit fun. Get a life.”
“The proven fact that they immediately began smiling … clickbait lol,” declared one other.
Others accused Nelson of violating Federal Aviation Regulations, which he addressed in a follow-up video on Instagram.
In it, the pilot claimed that the allegations of “careless or reckless operation” of an aircraft — one in every of many several violations of which he was accused — were erroneous on condition that he wasn’t “endangering” the ladies’s lives or jeopardizing the airplane.
“They’re simply floating up, floating down, I’m not overstressing the aircraft,” Nelson declared.
He also argued that their lack of seatbelts was high-quality, citing the proven fact that belts are only required for taxi, takeoff, and landing.
Lastly, Nelson refuted the notion that he liked to interrupt FAA rules simply to “create content,” claiming: “The rationale they’re capable of have a good time within the back is because they know I’m being protected about it. I’m ensuring we now have loads of altitude and that there’s no traffic around us.”
“I prefer to be protected and have a good time and I hope you guys can see that within the video,” he said.
