It was also reported he had a NZ CPL-H.

Did the Diploma course at CHCH Helicopters in 2022 - not sure what licence they come out of that with.

A Diploma in Aviation course qualifies for CPL.

The pilot has been named as Blake Wilson, joined Nautilus four months ago, there had been a gathering of some employees that night to farewell the chap as he was moving on to another Nautilus operation on Long Island in the Whitsundays as ground crew. Was not a work event, but co-ordinated by friends, ended about 2330. Elderly couple in room below the crash site injured, now released from hospital.

The media is still referring to the R44 involved as a twin-engine helicopter. I wonder how that bit of info started.

The journalist who published that rubbish was told it was not a twin engine helicopter before she published that rubbish....

If you count each cylinder of a Lycoming IO-540-AE1A5 as an 'engine' of its own, an R44 could be multi-engine I guess, but still not twin-engine...

megan: the transfer was reported to be Horn Island where Nautilus also has a base rather than Long Island.

It was not a work organised function. Just a group of mates wishing the guy well on his posting up North.

The Toxicology results will be interesting. Perhaps more than just grog involved?

In addition to the media reporting it was a twin engine R44, media also reported the pilot was "promoted" with a transfer to both bases.

Maybe the same one that posted that two propellors had fallen off!

The quality of journalism in Australia by-and-large is poor. I'm stunned reading on-line news every day at the volume of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and disjointed story lines. And when I see so-called aviation experts like Geoffrey Thomas (and others) being interviewed in response to events the drivel that comes out of their mouth makes me cringe. Literacy and numeracy is in decline for a whole generation, the NAPLAN data released today shows one third of all students in Year 3, 5, 7, and 9 are not meeting minimum academic standards. Journalists don't fact check their work and they write uninformed rubbish. Take for example one of Australia's highest paid journalists Lisa Wilkinson who's been paid $2M/year by Channel 10 to stay at home and do nothing for the past two years. By her own admission she didn't do any fact checking of the Higgin's allegations aired on The Project, and she didn't even seek comment from Senator Reynolds before the story was broadcast. Journalism in Australia is a joke, twin engine R44's and propellers in the pool or not.

I absolutely agree gulliBell! It is even worse with some of the twits masquerading as news announcers. In fact, I no longer watch the news on tv because of most of them.

I find that the ABC is just as bad as the commercial sources. Maybe the new broom will change things a bit.

A recent example was reporting on a fatal road accident in WA: “The accident happened 300 Km’s West of Perth”. Just how would the family concerned feel about that? Complete ignorance of all concerned.

Try searching Facebook for Blake Wilson and look for the DigitalWorldProducts.com link

Reports this morning that the accident pilot may have been in the hangar for up to an hour before he nicked the helicopter. Also, the keys were in the helicopter which they say is normal practice. Also, the informal "promotion" party wasn't a boozy affair and was wrapped up by 8.30 pm. So he's had time to think about it. What I can't wrap my head around is, how is pumping gas at Horn Island a promotion over what he was doing in Cairns? By all accounts he was a hard working team member.

Thanks gulliBell,
Sounds like the info is slowly leaking out.
I can't imagine Nautilus not having security cameras logging it all.
I listened to Nautilus first use the word "unauthorized" which means
an authorized person had access to the R44, then, the next thing I hear
is that it was a private party.

Fair enough, I've lost count of the number of great nights of great company
I've had with helicopter pilots.

I really feel for the Nautilus staff who are now going to have to watch the security videos
of what he did before he took the R44 out of the hangar.

Got to agree with you on why its a promotion to pump gas at Horn Island.
I think what it means is, that once you are at Long Island? or Horn Island? pumping gas
you are going to get some stick time and an introduction to the flight side.
(Long Island sounds like a typo)

These are high profile tourist locations that demand PR skills. An intro to that world
pumping gas would be a good introduction.

As for being hard working, thats one side of the story.
From an accident investigation point of view, I'd be more
interested in the human factors involved.

The "Australian" reported Long Island, as does this link. Long Island doesn't appear on the companies list of bases, perhaps a new locale for the operation.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/tragic-pos...210031899.html

I do a lot of technical automotive writing for my work, most of which ends up on peoples' walls on posters. The people writing the news are paid to write; I would imagine they are considered professional writers as part of their job role. Yet I also see constant spelling errors, grammar errors and plain incorrect facts every day. One of the worst I saw earlier this week was a news article about something in Vienna, Australia. Vienna is the capital of Austria! I think that auto-spelling correction and other tools are to blame for some of the errors, along with pressure to get breaking content onto the websites and feeds. But everything, and I do mean everything, should be proofread by someone else before going live.

One of the guys from Horn recently did a DG course with him, so I always assumed it was Horn.

Maybe there was a promise to the flight-line with a shorter queue in front at Horn Island. Dare I say the queue of waiting pilots at Horn island would be shorter than Cairns... Horn island is a damn long way up north and presumably a less desirable place to live.