Joyride costs $50,000

The HEB Construction machines cost $300,000. Photo / Thinkstock

Three Air Force employees and a former colleague have escaped conviction after a late-night drunken joyride with $300,000 worth of construction machines.

The quartet took a digger, roller, grader and water cart from a building site at the end of Auckland's Northwestern Motorway last November.

Their escapade ended when they crashed the vehicles, causing $50,000 worth of damage.

Anastasia Helen Gower, 24, Daniel Peter Melling, 24, Stephen Zeilstra, 23, and Thomas William Smedley, 26, pleaded guilty to four charges of unlawfully taking the machines and one of causing damage at Waitakere District Court this week.

All were discharged without conviction and ordered to pay HEB Construction for the damage.

Air Force Squadron Leader Kavea Tamariki said the quartet made an "error of judgment" and were paying the price.

"From our perspective, it's all been done and dusted. They collectively paid reparation ... and, in the meantime, they have also voluntarily undertaken work with the Salvation Army."

Tamariki said the Air Force would not take disciplinary action.

Zeilstra, a diesel mechanic, said the quartet had been gagged by their employer.

But in a Facebook posting two weeks after the incident, he said he had made some bad decisions. "I have been the king of bad decisions [sic] making of late haha," he wrote.

Melling, an aeronautic machinist, made headlines and was dubbed a "hero" after crossing Cook Strait in an amphibious van in 2009.

Gower no longer works for the Air Force.

She had worked as a warfare specialist and had been the face of an online recruitment campaign.