Keeping Up With the Joneses star wins back helicopter licence despite stunts
A REALITY TV star who used a helicopter to tow his wakeboarding teenage son, raced against a jet ski, and even tried towing a crocodile, has won back his right to fly.
Milton Jones, star of Channel 10’s Keeping up with the Joneses, had his flight crew licences cancelled by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority after the show aired in 2011.
CASA took action against Mr Jones, a Northern Territory cattleman who also controls a company operating one of Australia’s largest helicopter fleets, for alleged regulation breaches.
It had identified a number of incidents shown in the series, which portrayed life on the Joneses’ 400,000ha Coolibah Station.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal decided while Mr Jones had breached some regulations, he should be allowed licences to fly helicopters after remedial training on rules and regulations.
Senior tribunal member Bernard McCabe found Mr Jones had seriously contravened the law on several occasions during production of two *series of the show.
“The incident involving the jet ski and towing his son on the (wakeboard) were probably the most serious matters because they were obviously foolish actions that put other people in jeopardy,” Mr McCabe said.
While the scene involving Mr Jones’s teenage son Beau being towed by the helicopter made for excellent television, it demonstrated “alarmingly poor judgment”, he said.
Mr Jones also was wrong to allow his young son Little Milton to sit at the controls and start a helicopter engine, he said.
Mr McCabe found Mr Jones also breached regulations by doing aerial photography without a commercial pilot’s licence, low flying, failing to wear a lifejacket or a seatbelt correctly.
Mr McCabe said Mr Jones failed in his duty regarding safe navigation or operation of an aircraft but decided it was not necessary to cancel his licences.
Keeping Up With The Joneses star keeps his helicopter licence despite towing his son on a WAKEBOARD as it's revealed the time he used a helicopter to harvest crocodile eggs was FAKED
The concept of the entire TV show is built around their boundary pushing and daredevil lives in the outback.
But when millionaire Milton Jones towed his teenage son Beau on a wakeboard across a murky river with his helicopter, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority decided the Keeping Up With The Joneses star had gone one step too far.
Now he has won his chopper licence back, with CASA declaring he should be allowed to fly again after more training on rules and regulations, the Courier Mail reports.
However, the wakeboarding incident was slammed during an Administrative Appeals Tribunal, held in Brisbane on 31 October, and other dramatic stunts in the show were embarrassingly unearthed as fake.
Senior tribunal member Bernard J McCabe said: ‘It all looked very exciting, and it made for excellent television. It also demonstrated alarmingly poor judgement.’
The Northern Territory farmer was initially pulled up by the authority after they spotted a number of worrying incidents on his reality TV series.
The Channel 10 show follows his family’s life on a cattle station, in Coolibah, 600 km south-west of Darwin, where they muster cattle and wrestle crocodiles.
Mr Jones also owns a scenic flight company called Coolibah Air, the tourism arm of his North Australian Helicopters fleet which has been operating since 1993 with bases from Katherine, Victoria River, Cape Crawford and Darwin.
Mr Jones appealed against the decision to ban him from flying and during his tribunal McCabe listed the offences that CASA alleged Mr Jones committed in Keeping Up With The Joneses.
When Mr Jones was alleged to have used a helicopter to harvest crocodile eggs, Mr McCabe said: ‘The incident was staged. There was no crocodile nearby. The eggs were placed there before the cameras rolled.
‘Mr Jones explained in his evidence that it was the wrong time of year for crocodile egg harvesting, so it was necessary to pretend. He justified the role-play for the cameras by saying it accurately represented the way he harvested crocodile eggs.’
CASA also pulled Mr Jones up on his low-flying in the show, which they said he needed a special permit for.
He claimed he did have a permit but he lost it and the tribunal stated ‘I have no reason to doubt his claim’.
However, Mr McCabe pointed out that even if Mr Jones had a special permit that doesn’t mean it was OK for him to tow his son on a wakeboard while flying low.
‘There were a number of instances shown in Keeping up with the Joneses where Mr Jones was shown flying low in circumstances that were plainly unrelated to his agricultural and sling load operations,’ he said.
‘The scene in which he hovered above a watercourse while baiting a bull-shark is one example; so, too, the scene in which he hovered above a waterhole attempting to snare and tow an enraged crocodile.
‘Even more dramatically, there was a scene in which Mr Jones flew low over a stretch of water as he raced his brother-in-law on a jet ski, and another scene in which he towed his son Beau on a wave board,’ Mr McCabe said as he ruled Mr Jones ‘failed in his duty’.
Mr Jones was also rapped for leaving his helicopter unattended with the engine running and in some cases with his children still in it.
He argued that to stop the engine was dangerous in remote areas as if it didn’t start again he would become stranded but Mr McCabe pointed out that the cattleman was never alone in the filmed incidences – he had a whole Channel 10 film crew with him.
When it came to a scene in Keeping Up With The Joneses where Mr Jones raced his brother-in-law Hamish who was on a jet ski, Mr McCabe said: ‘While I accept the magic of television can affect perception of distance and proximity, it is clear enough from the edited and raw footage I saw that the helicopter was flying substantially under 500 feet during the scene, and at some points as close as tens of feet from the surface.’
He warned that ‘if something untoward had happened, the aircraft might have impacted the surface. That would have had disastrous consequences for Hamish and perhaps the spectators on the riverbank – and for Mr Jones himself.’
Mr McCabe blasted the stunt and said ‘there was no margin for error. Moreover, it was completely unnecessary to run the risk’.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Jones for comment.
When the NT News asked him about the CASA investigation in 2011 he said it was a 'witch-hunt'. And he described the waterskiing incident as 'a bit of fun' and 'perfectly safe'.
Mr McCabe concluded that Mr Jones contravened the law on several occasions during the production of two series of Keeping Up With The Joneses.
But he recommended that if Mr Jones got the necessary certification before the date on which the suspension is scheduled to come into effect, his licences will not be suspended.