I'd be interested in sources for these claims. Lots of hyperbole in this comment.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/helicopter-crash-timelin...
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.
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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
Could just mean that pilots can be irrational too.