The drug testing protocols of a helicopter operator have come under intense scrutiny following a fatal mid-air collision where a pilot tested positive for cocaine.

Ashley Jenkinson, a 40-year-old pilot for Sea World Helicopters, was one of four individuals who lost their lives when two helicopter joy flights collided near a popular Gold Coast theme park on January 2, 2023.

An autopsy revealed that Jenkinson had cocaine metabolites in his system, raising serious questions about safety measures in what has been described as one of Australia’s most tragic air accidents.

During an inquest held nearly three years after the tragic incident, it was revealed that Sea World Helicopters did not conduct daily drug tests on its pilots, a fact that has sparked significant concern.

In 2019, Sea World Helicopters secured a decade-long contract to operate joy flights, succeeding Village Roadshow Theme Parks on the Gold Coast.

The helicopter company had continued a policy of having pilots breath tested for alcohol by Sea World staff before every shift, Village head of operations Llewella McNabb told the inquest in Brisbane.

However they were not drug tested before every shift, coroner Carol Lee was told.

“Sea World helicopter pilots can be drug tested on suspicion but even though pilots are engaging in activities considered high risk they are not tested on that basis?” counsel assisting Ian Harvey said.

Pilots were drug tested by Village nurses at random and before their first day of employment, McNabb said.

“It does take time. Drug testing takes longer,” she said.

“Drug testing can take up to 20 minutes. With saliva swab tests you do have to wait sufficient time. It depends on the individual.”

McNabb said she did not write the policy and did not know if the test time duration was the reason for not performing daily drug screening.

Experts are due to testify next week as to whether Jenkinson could have been medically, cognitively or psychologically impaired to some degree by the effects of cocaine usage.

The inquest will over the next two weeks look at 11 critical issues surrounding the crash that also killed British newlyweds Ronald and Diane Hughes – aged 65 and 67 – and Sydney mother Vanessa Tadros, 36.

Jenkinson was “unlikely to have been directly affected by the drug at the time of the accident,” a previous Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation found.

Village subjected Jenkinson to a random drug test in August 2022, Lee heard.

Jackson Simm, a former pilot at Sea World Helicopters, testified he had not known of any drug problems among pilots at the theme park’s helipad.

“Did you socialise at all with Ashley Jenkinson?” Harvey said.

The Gold Coast broadwater around Sea World was an “extremely busy air space” that included people on parachutes being towed behind power boats, Simm testified.

“I’ve got experience with half a dozen operators around the country and I found the Sea World induction process was extensive and thorough,” he said.

Jenkinson’s aircraft fell about 40 metres before crashing on a sandbar after the mid-air collision.

The pilot of the second helicopter, Michael James, managed an emergency landing on the same sandbar.

James died in 2024 of a medical condition unrelated to the crash.