A helicopter pilot was killed and others injured early Monday when the pilot crashed his helicopter onto the roof of an Australian hotel during an unauthorized flight, authorities said.
The New Zealand Herald identified the pilot as 23-year-old New Zealander Blake Wilson.
Nautilus Aviation confirmed to news agencies that Wilson was one of its employees but had never flown in Australia before.
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The company said he was a member of ground crew and held a helicopter pilot’s licence in New Zealand but was not authorised to fly the company’s helicopters in Australia.
The man had worked at Nautilus Aviation for four months and had recently been promoted to ground crew at another of the company’s locations, Nautilus Aviation said. Before the crash, the man had attended a social event with coworkers to celebrate his departure to the new job, the company said.
The flight was not authorized and the helicopter was “misused,” the company added.
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The crash early Monday morning required the evacuation of hundreds of people from the building as the plane burst into flames.
A couple staying at the hotel were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation and have since been released, Shane Holmes, acting chief of police for the Queensland Police Service, told reporters. No one else at the scene was injured.
Cairns Airport CEO Richard Barker said initial findings from a review on Monday showed there had been “no compromise to the airport’s security program or processes”.
The airport will operate under a “federally approved, multi-layered transportation security program,” Barker said.
The crash occurred in a busy tourist area of Cairns, a tropical city of 150,000 people in the far north of Queensland, which is currently the peak season for holidaymakers.
Witnesses told local news agencies that the crash sounded like a bomb exploding.
Smoke and flames rose from the roof of the DoubleTree Hilton, and one of the helicopter’s rotor blades landed in the hotel pool, Australian broadcaster ABC reported.
The hotel remains cordoned off while its structural integrity is assessed.
Fox News Digital has contacted Nautilus Aviation and Queensland Police for updates.
