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Comment by ovb | Hacker News Reader

And before US Helicopter, there was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Airways

New York Airways had one notable accident: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/may-16-1977-hel...

The NYC helicopters in general have a terrible track record. There are constantly articles about them crashing into the rivers, into buildings, into other helicopters or planes, etc. Someone else in the thread posted an article about how the overall helicopter fatality rate compares with the car fatality rate, and while it's hard to say for certain, it doesn't look promising.

I'd be interested in sources for these claims. Lots of hyperbole in this comment.

7 crashes between 1995 - 2011, and that's only into the same two rivers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/helicopter-crash-timelin...

Is that bad though? I'm guessing there are at least hundreds of thousands of helicopter flights in New York annually. ~1 accident per year doesn't sound very dangerous to me.

As for the concept, it's Uber for helicopters. As long as there is a need (I don't and would never live in New York so I have no idea what the demand for this is) then it may very well be successful.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

It's hard to compare cars and helicopters. From the article:

"Between 2005 and 2009, there was an annual average of 1.44 fatalities (PDF) per 100,000 flying hours in nonmilitary helicopters. Over the same period, there were 13.2 traffic fatalities per 100,000 population in the United States annually. Since the average American spends around 780 hours per year (PDF) in the car, that means the fatality rate per 100,000 hours of driving time is just 0.017. Based on hours alone, helicopters are 85 times more dangerous than driving."

Assume you used such a service (roundtrip) once per month, and it saved you 40 hours per year.

The annual risk of dying in the helo crash (taking the numbers from above) is 12 minutes flying RT * 12 RT/year = 144 minutes per year / 60 mins/hr * 1.44/100K or a risk of dying of 3.456 per 100K years. (overstated as the figure is fatalities per 100K hours, not fatal accidents per 100K).

The annual risk of dying in a car crash if you took that instead is 240 minutes * 12 RT/yr / 60 mins/hr * 0.017 = 0.816 per 100K years.

Over 50 years, your life expectancy has been shortened by about 12 hours. (This is the math I'm least sure about.)

Over that same 50 years, the helo has saved you 2000 hours of your life, for a net addition of almost months of life (assuming, as I do, you derive no value from the car ride to the airport).

Said differently, each roundtrip saves you about 3 hours of your life, plus gives you a fantastic view of the city on the way...

Saves 3 hours of your life, provided that you consider riding in a car for 3 hours equivalent to being dead for 3 hours.

A ~2 hour limo ride (presumably the direct alternative) would be far more from zero productivity.

If you really can't use a laptop in a car there is still, getting something to eat, making a phone call, or even just listening to music.

> an annual average of 1.44 fatalities (PDF) per 100,000 flying hours in nonmilitary helicopters.

Big question here of what's being measured. If this includes search and rescue helicopters, fire fighting, weather, and similar, then it's not at all comparable to routine transportation driving.

The article talks about some of the difficulties. FWIW, i think ambulance accident rates are about 4 times more than routine driving. So more like 20x more dangerous to fly.

There's also a bunch of complexity about what happens to helicopter safety rates when that kind of flying becomes routine. Maybe it'll get way safer, because there are so many less risky flights, maybe it'll get more dangerous because pilots get complacent.

fwiw, i walk to work, so i hardly drive at all. If i was in a situation that i could take the flight, i'd take the flight.

An anecdotal source this - but a family friend of ours is a senior pilot for a well known international airline and a former air-force pilot. He also owns and fly's a microlight in his spare time. Recently my father took a helicopter flight and when this family friend heard about it he was absolutely livid at my father for risking his life and made my father swear to never fly a helicopter again.

>Recently my father took a helicopter flight and when this family friend heard about it he was absolutely livid at my father for risking his life and made my father swear to never fly a helicopter again.

Could just mean that pilots can be irrational too.

Once I run the numbers for air travel fatality rates, as compared to car fatality rates but talking into account miles travelled for both (and number of passengers etc), and, assuming I was correct, they came out pretty close.

According to wiki, autos are more than an order of magnitude more dangerous per mile:

                                       Air      Car
    Miles driven                        40      450
    Risk (millionths)                 0.60     6.75

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

edit: that was a shallow misreading of the data. But the end concludes that air travel is roughly slightly less than an order of magnitude safer.

Per mile is a weird metric, isn't it? It just seems to favor aircraft that travel so much farther.

Per trip would be interesting Not to mention, a minor crash or serious failure in a car is usually a walk away event. A minor crash or serious failure in a plane or chopper is usually fatal. Its okay if my car breaks down on the interstate. Its not okay if my plane does over the ocean, like Air France 447.

I'm not saying air travel is unsafe. I just think we're selling the point incorrectly.

90% of the risk in airplane travel is the takeoffs and landings, not the miles travelled. IIRC it came out to each airplane trip was as dangerous as ~30 miles of driving, meaning any trip that is normally offered by an airline is noticeably safer.

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