A helicopter crashed into the roof of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in the city of Cairns, northern Australia, around 1:50 am local time (5:50 pm on Saturday in Brussels).
Witnesses have told reporters and police they had noticed the helicopter flying very low and very fast in the minutes leading up to the crash. It apparently soared past taller buildings before hitting the 7-storey hotel, which is located near the city’s Esplanade, a waterfront boardwalk.
The hotel was immediately evacuated and thankfully none of the 421 adults and 50 children that were guests at the hotel or the 2 staff members suffered any serious injuries. Only two people, a man in his 80s and a woman in her 70s, with the room close to the collision site, suffered minor injuries. They were taken to the Cairns Hospital in a stable condition and have since been discharged, according to ABC News.
While all of the people in the hotel were safely evacuated, the pilot and single occupant of the aircraft was located and declared deceased at the scene, with forensic investigations underway to formally identify them.
Police have confirmed the man had taken the aircraft out of a general aviation hangar at Cairns Airport. Nautilus Aviation, the charter company owning the Robinson R44 helicopter, have confirmed the flight was unauthorised and they “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.”
“We’ll piece that together from not only witness statements and some of the CCTV that have captured it, but equally, what we can actually gather from the crash site itself, any of the recording devices that were on and operable on the helicopter that we can recover now”, Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell told ABC News.
It is not yet known why the man took the helicopter, nor how he managed to get into the hangar and take off. Cairns Airport CEO Richard Barker said initial findings of a review on Monday showed “no compromise of the airport security program or processes”. Queensland Police Service Acting Chief Superintendent Shane Holmes has said it is possible the man held a pilot’s license or worked for Nautilus Aviation.
The streets around the hotel and the nearby stretch of the Esplanade have been cordoned off by the police and will remain inaccessible until all evidence is collected from the scene. One of the aircraft’s blades landed in the hotel’s pool, while another flew over and landed on the Esplanade. However, Holmes assured “there is no further threat to the community, and we believe this is an isolated incident”.
The ATSB has explained that if it finds the accident is not an aviation safety matter, meaning an investigation from the body would be unlikely to determine new safety learnings and issues for the industry overall, it would discontinue its review and leave the matter in the hands of the police.
