The history and future of helicopters in NYC
Bloomberg has a pretty interesting video on the history of helicopters in New York City and what the future may hold for them. Helicopters were a more common means of transportation in the 1950’s and 60’s. A company called New York Airways had dozens of daily flights on their 20 seat shuttles to the NYC airports. This means you could get to your gate in just 20 minutes, and with an awesome view.
After the construction of the PanAm building (now MetLife) in the early 1960’s, they added a heliport to their roof for passengers connecting onto PanAm flights.
An accident on the PanAm heliport from a worn down helicopter that flipped on its side and killed 5 people put the helicopter business in NYC and other major cities (SF and Chicago) out of business within two years. The two main reasons for their failure?
- The hourly cost of operation is high
- Noise
A startup company called Blade says they have a fix for the high cost of operation by utilizing a ride sharing model similar to Uber (explained ~7:00 min mark in the video). Others are fixing the noise issue by creating a new type of aircraft, Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL) crafts. Here is an article and video with a prototype. They’re very futuristic but I have to admit it would be pretty awesome if the cost came down and the noise issue was solved. I’d sure like to get to the airport in 20 minutes.
