Atlantica - 01.04.2006, Page 32

30 AT L A N T I CA
on the fly
TIME IS MONEY
by Dea Birkett as told to Eliza Reid
It’s 6:30 pm on a Thursday, and you’re sitting in
a cab in midtown Manhattan with eight million
other commuters. Traffic isn’t just creeping along
– it’s stopped. It’s 95 degrees, 98 percent humidity,
and you’re sweating through your pinstriped suit.
Worse, you have a flight to Paris from JFK that leaves
in an hour.
Sound like a familiar nightmare? Well, it might
not have to happen again. Ever. You can now get
from downtown Manhattan to JFK in eight minutes
by helicopter. The new airport shuttle service run by
private company U.S. Helicopter (www.flyush.com)
made its inaugural flight in March, offering the only
Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation
Administration-certified scheduled helicopter airline
service in the United States.
Tickets aren’t cheap. USD 159 (plus applicable
taxes and fees) gets you a one-way fare, but when
time is money, this might be an answer.
“There has to be a need for helicopter passenger
lines,” says Martin Pociask, communications director
of Helicopter Association International based in
Alexandria, Virginia. “And New York is certainly geared
towards business.”
New York’s new chopper transfer could be a foray
into the future of business commuting, but it’s too
early to predict whether it’ll stay airborne for the long
haul. Similar services in New York, Chicago, and Los
Angeles flopped decades ago.
There hasn’t been another helicopter commuter
airline in the States since the late 1970s. According
to the UK’s National Air Traffic Services, a copter taxi
service once linked Heathrow and Gatwick airports
until 1986, when the opening of the M25, a 117-mile
roadway circumnavigating London, proved a better
way to go in the mid 1980s.
Chopper transfers have thrived over the years
elsewhere in Europe and in Asia, though not always
for the business traveler. While the service in New
York enables you to avoid snarled traffic jams on the
ground, other commuter choppers exist because
the locations they serve are simply inaccessible by
plane. Helicopters are an answer in areas where air
travel is complicated by geographic restrictions like
vast bodies of water, small areas of land, or mountain
ranges.
“Helicopters are ideally suited to transport people
in places where regular aircraft can’t go,” Pociask
said.
Whether you’re avoiding traffic in New York, the
Pearl River Delta between Hong Kong and Macau
(www.helihongkong.com), or can’t wait to leave
Nice to play blackjack in Monaco’s casino (www.
heliairmonaco.com), you can fly high as a commuter
aboard a Sikorsky S76. It may cost some serious
bucks, but at least you’ve bought yourself some time.
And the view’s always better from above. a SB
PHOTO BY PÁLL STEFÁNSSON
009 airmail Atlantica 306.indd 30 23.4.2006 22:23:52