Pilot steals helicopter, crashes into hotel after attending party in Australia

globalnews.ca:

helicopters and crashed into the rooftop of a Hilton hotel in Australia. Hours before the crash, he had attended a party thrown on his behalf celebrating a promotion, his company said.The incident occurred in the early hours of Monday morning in the popular tourist city of Cairns, a coastal town near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

After the helicopter crashed into the DoubleTree by Hilton, hundreds of hotel guests were evacuated as smoke and flames billowed from the hotel’s rooftop.A couple who were staying at the hotel were rushed to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation and have since been discharged. No one else was hurt in the crash, authorities said.On Tuesday afternoon, the company that the pilot worked for released a statement sharing new details about the circumstances of the crash.Nautilus Aviation wrote that the man who died was a member of the company’s ground crew.

He held a helicopter pilot’s licence in New Zealand but was not authorized to fly in Australia.The worker was somehow able to gain “unauthorized access to our helicopter hangar and misappropriated one of our helicopters.”Hours before the crash, employees of Nautilus Aviation had thrown a farewell party for the man, celebrating his promotion to a ground crew position at another one of the company bases.“We can confirm this event did occur and was a privately organised send-off for the individual involved in Monday morning’s incident,” the company wrote. “This was not a work event and was co-ordinated by friends.”An unnamed source from the company told 9News Queensland that the worker had been drinking at the party before the crash.Nearly 400 people were evacuated from the DoubleTree Hilton in Cairns after the helicopter crashed into the