A helicopter pilot has died in a crash near a Canterbury aerodrome this evening.<\/p>\n
Police said it received reports of a crash near Eyrewell in the Waimakariri District, north of Christchurch, at around 5.20pm on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
“The pilot of the helicopter, the sole occupant, died at the scene, near Eyrewell,” said Detective Senior Sergeant Dan Overend said. <\/p>\n
“Police are supporting the deceased’s family and enquiries into the circumstances of the crash are ongoing.” <\/p>\n
The scene has been secured overnight, with recovery and examination work to continue on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency NZ crews responded from Cust, Oxford and Rangiora, while St John also confirmed it had attended.<\/p>\n
Footage captured by 1News at the scene shows police searching the area with torches after dark, as the wreckage of the aircraft lies on its side in a nearby paddock.<\/p>\n
Eyrewell resident Vickie Lawson said she and her husband Steve witnessed the aircraft fall from the sky from their home.<\/p>\n
“It just fell out of the sky, quite literally,” she told 1News.<\/p>\n
Steve Lawson said the aircraft appeared to be about 400m from the nearby Forest Field Aerodrome when he heard its engine begin to struggle.<\/p>\n
“The engine coughed, and then everything went silent,” he recalled. <\/p>\n
“[It] rotated half a turn, and then plunged. It just plummeted, and then there was just silence.”<\/p>\n
Eyrewell is located about 30km northwest of Christchurch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A helicopter pilot has died in a crash near a Canterbury aerodrome this evening. Police said it received…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[158,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-593944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593944","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=593944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}