Cairns helicopter crash: Nautilus Aviation CEO Aaron Finn reveals key details of fatal night
Nautilus Aviation’s CEO has outlined the events leading up to a young worker’s ultimately fatal theft of a company helicopter, as police hone in on the critical hours after a send-off party for the 23-year-old concluded.
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The boss of Nautilus Aviation has detailed the final movements of an employee who stole and crashed a helicopter into a Cairns hotel on Monday - from the celebrations that took place in town to how he gained access to the chopper undetected.
New Zealand national Blake Wilson, identified as the ground crew staff member who fatally flew a Nautilus Aviation Robinson R44 into DoubleTree by Hilton about 1.50am on Monday, had been awarded employee of the month and had earned a promotion to a new role, the company’s chief executive Aaron Finn said.
The last time Mr Finn spoke with the 23-year-old was “Thursday or Friday” and he said it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
“It was just a general chat in the hangar,” Mr Finn said.
“As you walk past quite often you just say a quick ‘good morning what do you have on for today?’
“He was in a good place.”
Mr Finn said Mr Wilson’s role at the company as a ground handler included duties of refuelling aircraft, moving helicopters, and briefing passengers, as well as other general duties.
“He just won employee of the month on Friday, we can’t fault him as a person or an employee,” he said.
“So we’re all at a loss as to why this has happened, dumbfounded.
“I can’t sort of say too much more than that, apart from he was a model employee.”
Mr Finn said while there was widespread speculation of a party prior to Mr Wilson’s fatal flight, such gatherings were not permitted or ever held at the airport hangar.
“We did have a function on Thursday night out the front of the hangar, and put some sausages on for our employee of the month award; so whether or not people saw that,” Mr Finn suggested.
He reiterated celebrations on Sunday evening were privately organised between staff members and occurred at venues around the city.
Mr Finn said police were reviewing CCTV of those venues and movements, but he “hadn’t asked” about the locations.
He said his employees who were with Mr Wilson had gone home by 8.30pm on Sunday, and because Mr Wilson wasn’t working the following day, he’d chosen to stay out.
“So it wasn’t a booze up, it wasn’t a huge night,” he explained.
“Blake chose to stay on – he wasn’t rostered to work Monday morning.”
In fact, Mr Wilson was supposed to be flying out to Horn Island at 3pm on Monday for his new position.
“So if he wanted to stay out, that’s his prerogative,” Mr Finn said.
“But our other staff, we’ve confirmed the latest person to leave was 8.30pm.
“So for everyone to beat it up and say it was a big, boozy night, it’s incorrect.”
Mr Finn said he was unaware who Mr Wilson was with for the five hours after the Nautilus employees had left.
The aviation boss said he was at the hangar from 3am on Monday following the crash, speaking with police when they were trying to determine who may have been involved.
“We were looking at car registrations and Blake’s wasn’t one, so we’re not sure how he got there,” Mr Finn explained.
“We know he spent about 45 minutes to an hour in the hangar before taking off.
“That’s interesting because I’ve been there early in the morning getting ready for a rescue, and airport security or AFP will come in and say ‘hey what are you doing’. I’m not suggesting they did anything wrong, but Blake went unnoticed.”
Mr Finn said Mr Wilson gained access to the hangar by inputting a pin code – which was shared among all staff and did not identify individuals.
“We’re now looking at changing that already and even restricting the time limits on certain codes for certain employees.”
He said the keys for the Robinson R44 were inside the helicopter, which the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was made aware of and which he said was “common practice among operators”.
“We’ve got 40-odd pilots, and if they put the keys in their pocket and went home and then had a couple days off – it would really impact business,” Mr Finn said.
“But in this case, we had someone who had access anyway, so if we put them in a safe, well someone still needs access to that safe so it just comes down to intent.”
Mr Finn said while Mr Wilson did have a New Zealand helicopter license, he was not authorised to fly in Australia, but had expressed his interest in doing so.
“So we’ve got no idea what his skill base was because he’d never flown for us. We’d never done a check flight with him and he hadn’t flown since 2022.”
After Mr Wilson departed Cairns Airport, he flew the chopper for about four minutes before crashing into the roof of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel.
“To our knowledge or to the knowledge of the police, he’s never even set foot in that hotel – they aren’t aware that he even knew anyone in that hotel,” Mr Finn said.
“I’ve been asked whether he had mates he was trying to show off at the hotel – that’d be 100 per cent incorrect.”
The following morning, Mr Finn said it was a process of elimination to determine who had accessed the hangar and he had immediately ruled out all his pilots.
He said with staff given the day off on Monday, Mr Wilson was just one of many who “didn’t answer the phone” during a ring around.
“It wasn’t until (Tuesday) we confirmed he hadn’t made his flight to Horn Island that we really started investigating the possibility; we were just hoping that he might have overslept and missed his flight, but we asked AFP to check it out and he never boarded his flight on Monday afternoon.”
Mr Finn said he would be speaking with Mr Wilson’s family on Friday.
On Wednesday the business had resumed operations.
He said the loss of the helicopter was valued at $600,000 but “it wasn’t a concern”.
“You can replace aircraft, you can’t replace people. So you know, probably Blake’s family’s well being and our staff’s well being is our focus and concern,” he said.
“We’ve engaged external counsellors to be available for our staff. QPS have volunteered a counsellor as well.
“We’ve gone through the ATSB and police investigations and they have nothing to fault with our actual operations.”
ATSB transport safety investigators were expected to finish collecting evidence from the crash on Wednesday.
In a statement, the ATSB said it had assessed that “other safety lessons” may emerge from the incident, and so it planned to continue its investigation through to the publication of a preliminary report in six to eight weeks time.
The preliminary report will detail the accident flight’s sequence of events and evidence gathered by the ATSB.
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