A helicopter that crashed into a Far North Queensland hotel roof was stolen before being taken on an “unauthorised flight”, the aviation company it belonged to has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The pilot, who has not yet been identified, was alone in the helicopter and died at the scene.<\/p>\n
Investigations are continuing into who was flying the aircraft, but Nautilus Aviation CEO Aaron Finn confirmed to the ABC that all its pilots had been accounted for.<\/p>\n
Up to 400 people were evacuated from the DoubleTree by Hilton on Cairns Esplanade after the crash, which set the top of the building alight, shortly before 2am on Monday, police said.<\/p>\n
Two of the helicopter’s rotor blades came off and landed on the esplanade and in the hotel pool. There were no injuries on the ground.<\/p>\n
Charter company Nautilus Aviation said the use of the helicopter was “unauthorised”.<\/p>\n
“Nautilus Aviation are working closely with Queensland Police, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and other authorities as they investigate the unauthorised use of one of our helicopters in the early hours of this morning.<\/p>\n
“As we continue to fully support the ongoing investigation, we will not be making further comments at this time.”<\/p>\n
Forensic investigators are working to identify the pilot, who died at the scene.<\/p>\n
Two hotel guests – a man in his 80s and a woman in her 70s – were taken to Cairns Hospital in a stable condition and have since been discharged.<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A helicopter that crashed into a Far North Queensland hotel roof was stolen before being taken on an “unauthorised flight”, the aviation company it belonged to has confirmed. The pilot, who has not yet been identified, was alone in the helicopter and died at the scene. Investigations are continuing into who was flying the aircraft, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-world"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10949,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10947\/revisions\/10949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}