{"id":593942,"date":"2026-09-08T13:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/593942\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T13:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:48:08","slug":"pilot-dies-in-small-aircraft-crash-in-rural-canterbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/593942\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilot dies in small aircraft crash in rural Canterbury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The pilot of a light aircraft has died following a crash in rural North Canterbury.<\/p>\n<p>Police said they were called to the scene near a\u00a0Waimakariri aerodrome near Eyrewell about 5.20pm.<\/p>\n<p>Detective Senior Sergeant Dan Overend\u00a0said the pilot of the helicopter, the sole occupant, died at the scene.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Police are supporting the deceased&#8217;s family and enquiries into the circumstances of the crash are ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The scene has been secured overnight and recovery and examination work will continue tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>The Civil Aviation Authority has been notified and will attend as part of its investigation.<\/p>\n<p>A witness told Stuff she\u00a0saw the aircraft, described as a \u201chome-built helicopter\u201d, fall from the sky.<\/p>\n<p>She had seen the man flying in the area regularly over the past few weeks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pilot of a light aircraft has died following a crash in rural North Canterbury. Police said they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-593942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}