Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

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New York Airways used to have a helicopter service from JFK to Manhattan, it was cheap and frequent.

Wikipedia: 'New York Airways flew Vertol 107 helicopters from the rooftop helipad to Pan Am's terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport from December 21, 1965, to February 18, 1968, when the service ceased due to inadequate passenger loads. For a short part of that time, they also offered service to Teterboro Airport.

Service to JFK resumed in early 1977 using Sikorsky S-61s. On May 16, 1977, about one minute after an S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five 20-foot (6.1 m) blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men were killed instantly and another died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a female pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured. Helicopter service was quickly suspended, and never resumed'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetLife_Building#Helicopter_se...

There was another much more recent commuter helicopter service in NYC. It did not have any incidents but ended up going out of business during the 2008 recession. It only cost something like $150-$200 IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Helicopter

Here is a short documentary about those helicopter rides from Bloomberg with some pictures and videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY

Wow thanks for this.

I admit, that's terrifying and somewhat mind blowing. The landing gear collapsed while it was 'parked' - ultimately killing a person a block away with the blades.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/08/when-airport-...

New York Airways also flew to Wall Street (ground level landing) from Laguardia for around 40 bucks in today's money in the 70's.

> it was cheap and frequent.

Do you know what the price was?

$5 according to the YouTube documentary posted in your sibling comment.

Wow, that is extremely cheap!

I haven’t had time to watch the documentary yet, but my first thought about a $5 price tag is that it can’t possibly be accounting for inflation.

$5 in 1977 is about $21.15 give or take a few cents according to most of the website i checked the numbers on.

So while it might be $5, that was definitely not as cheap as it might otherwise seem.

Regardless of the inflation adjustments, ~$20 is surprisingly inexpensive for a commuter helicopter ride, I wonder if the economies of scale really do bring it down or if they were still eating their losses trying to grow business at that price.

Thanks for doing the math. $20 is still so cheap as to warrent a "Wow, that is incredibly cheap" IMHO.

Taxi flat rate from Manhatten to JFK is over $50. How the price for a helicopter ride could be on the same order of magnitude as a taxi is beyond me.

The flat rate has only been in effect for several years. I would assume it would be a lot more expensive to take a taxi from midtown directly to JFK before the flat rate.

> So while it might be $5, that was definitely not as cheap as it might otherwise seem.

An uber to JFK from Manhatten is ~$100 - that's still dirt cheap!

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Airways) it was 4,5$ in '55 (~43$ in 2019). The helicopter fit 15 passengers and the trip took 10 minutes. If you assume a ride every 30 minutes at ~half capacity for 8 hours, that's 16843=5504$ a day. If you can keep that up all day every day, that's a bit over 2M$ a year today. It's certainly not that much, but doable.

Helicopter service makes no sense to me. A very fast electric ferry from Downtown and one of the Piers near midtown... That makes a lot more sense to me.

> Helicopter service makes no sense to me.

A helicopter can go in a straight line and land on the apron, right next to a waiting aircraft. How long is a ferry going to take to get all the way around Brooklyn, through the bays and where is it going to dock when it gets there?! That'd take hours.

Not at all. A fast ferry from downtown NYC should take around 20 minutes to get to JFK. It would be easy for them to integrate a marine terminal there, just as they are going to do at LaGuardia airport. It’s a hell of a lot more practical than a helicopter service.

> A fast ferry from downtown NYC should take around 20 minutes to get to JFK.

20 minutes?! It's like 20 miles around Brooklyn. It'd need to be a 60 mph ferry! Does such a thing exist?

Such ferries do exist (hydrofoil or hovercraft) but sailing through a congested channel at 60 mph would be wildly dangerous. I can't imagine the Coast Guard or port authorities would ever allow it.

Yes this would be a challenge. It may not be able to operate at full speed for the entire duration of the trip, but significant portions it probably could.

Yes. They do exist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Francisco

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