For Jamaican-born pilot Jabari Brown, having copped a US$2 million jet after beating 99 other airmen in a dramatic YouTube challenge hosted by popular internet personality Mr Beast, the feeling is still surreal.

At 20, he was the youngest in the field of pilots who were put through a series of challenges, from hauling an aeroplane to surviving jet blasts and skydiving. The challenge took place in October, which gave Brown some time to settle and rest before the video was posted to YouTube on December 6, thrusting him into the spotlight.

Speaking Tuesday to Observer Online from Saudi Arabia, where he remains after the contest was held there, Brown explained that despite having time to process, the feeling is still unreal.

“It’s an indescribable moment because everything was so fast, but so slow, I’m like, so this means I’m a millionaire now? Just thinking of everything. I’m like, there’s no way, I can’t believe it. It was just hard to fathom anything, you know and then also thinking like you just won a Mr Beast challenge, you are gonna be the front and centre of attention.”

In fact, he was only expecting about a US$100,000 prize when he was called to participate in the reality television event.

“One day, I just got a phone call…they asked if I was available from October 8th through the 18th, and I didn’t check my schedule, I just said yes… I had zero idea what it was about, I just knew it was with Mr Beast, and there was gonna be international travel involved,” Brown said, noting “I actually thought the prize was gonna be like a hundred grand, I was doing math and thinking. Okay, what can I do with a hundred grand?”

The challenge initially began with 100 pilots competing to win a private jet. The final challenge, which pared the group down to 10 pilots, was simple, or so the final cut made it seem.

The last pilot to remove their hands from an aircraft, set on a trailer in the middle of a freeway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, would take that jet home.

The men held on for over 19 hours, at one point even running along the road with hands stretched overhead to touch the wings of the plane.

For Brown, it was the most difficult part of the test.

“It’s not displayed that well in the video… but we probably ran nine or 10 miles… running that in boots was crazy, I had blisters on my pinky toe,” he explained.

With only three competitors, including Brown left in the competition, another twist was added. They were told that in one hour they would have to devise a game between themselves where the winner would keep his hand on the jet and the losers remove their hands.

The catch was, if the losers decided not to honour that agreement and more than one person kept their hands on the plane, no one would win it.

This final challenge led to some heated words between Brown, who wanted a skills-based challenge citing a need to earn the jet, and the other two men, who wanted a game of chance with three suitcases and only one holding a ‘golden ticket’.

The men even expressed doubts about whether Brown would remove his hand if he lost.

But that line of questioning was moot, because when the cases were opened, Brown was the winner, and the two older men honoured their agreement, removing their hands.

“When the two contestants took their hands off the jet, I couldn’t believe that. I just genuinely thought we were all gonna lose the jet and just go home with 10 grand,” Brown said, adding “So, to be honest, winning was a bonus for me because I genuinely expected all of us to get nothing.”

Brown also expressed some amount of anxiety about the video prior to its release.

“I thought that I would get a lot of hate because of the way I played the game, you know, I thought they may have portrayed me as a villain,” he said. “But when I saw the actual video, I was happy with the way I was portrayed. I thought I was portrayed very fairly by the editors.”

Jamaican pilot Jabari Brown was overwhelmed with emotion following his win (Photo: Mr Beast Youtube)

The final cut showed arguments between contestants, including between Brown and others, as well as clips of contestants deciding whether to lie to each other in a ‘deal or no deal’ type contest that would determine whether they entered the final.

Brown says he has received some hateful comments for his decisions in the game, but he said when compared to the support of Jamaicans, he can’t even hear them.

“Obviously I did get hate but the love overwhelmed the little bit of hate I got, and you know my country, having an entire country behind me is like it’s almost impossible for me to see the hate,” Brown said.

Born in Jamaica to parents June Peters-Brown, a nurse at the Spanish Town Hospital, and Christopher Brown, a driver from the Jamaican Urban Transit Company, Brown emigrated to the United States with his family in about grade three.

He said he had a “normal Jamaican childhood”.

“I grew up with the two-parent household in Innswood Village and I went to basic school [and] primary school,” Brown said, adding “I played football with the Chubby bottles, filled it up with the stones,” he said, intermittently switching from an American to a Jamaican accent.

Brown went on to finish primary and high school in Florida where he discovered his passion for aviation.

“I never knew I wanted to be a pilot, but I always wanted to fly a plane at least one time – that was a bucket list item,” he said.

After speaking to a pilot he began to chase those dreams with vigor in August 2022, receiving a scholarship from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) in Florida, which propelled him into flight school where he completed training in under six months, making him a registered pilot and instructor.

Brown, who is also an established aviation content creator going by ‘Capt Treezy’, is not yet able to fly a commercial aircraft, but not because he lacks the skills.

Jabari Brown is a longtime aviation content creator (Photo: Instagram Capt.Treezy)

“I fly private jets, I cannot fly [for] the airlines because I’m too young. I have all the qualifications, I have every requirement to be an airline pilot, but I’m not 21. I have to be 21 per the United States Law to be an airline pilot,” he explained.

Commenting on the timing of his win in relation to the devastation experienced in parts of Jamaica following the October 28 passage of Hurricane Melissa, Brown said he was concerned about the optics.

“I was looking forward to making the country proud but then the hurricane came and destroyed [sections of] the country and I was like wow, I don’t know how this will look,” Brown said. “Luckily, it was able to come out in a time when people can actually enjoy it.”

Brown says he will use his prize in part to support his business, Integrity Aviation Online Groundschool, in the hope of creating a steady income stream to retire his parents.

He also had some encouraging words for young aviation aspirants in Jamaica.

“I would say, find your gift and be the best at your gift because you never know where it will take you,” Brown said. “This was a Mr Beast challenge so it is out of the ordinary, but this came from me being extraordinary in my gift.

“It’s true, if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” he said.