<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-02/nyc-s-tourist-helicopters>
"New York is among the world’s most helicoptered cities, exceeded only by São
Paulo and followed by Tokyo. I have never been to the former, which boasts
2,200 flights daily. But on a recent visit to Tokyo, I saw only two or three
helicopters all day. New York skies seem never free of them. From our studio
window at 26 Broadway, I’ve counted as many as seven helicopters flying about
the harbor at once.
These aircraft run a gamut of essential services. There are the NYPD units from
Floyd Bennett Field, the sleek orange-and-white MH-65 Dolphins of the US Coast
Guard, and the occasional brace of dark HH-60s on Air National Guard training
flights. Helicopters airlift critically injured patients to hospitals and whisk
organs to transplant recipients. They carry out search and rescue operations,
support first responders and gather news.
But these vital aerial operations account for a small percentage of helicopter
flights over the city. Many of the aircraft you see every day — the big,
twin-engine Sikorsky S-76s that roar along Flatbush Avenue, the black Bell 407s
operated by the aerial shuttle service Blade — are schlepping the well-heeled
and impatient to and from local airports or the Hamptons. More flights still —
30,000 a year from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport alone — spirit sightseers
around and about city landmarks.
These are the “non-essential” flights that the New York City Council recently
voted to restrict in the wake of a fatal crash on April 10. Six people,
including a family of five Spanish tourists, plunged to their deaths in the
Hudson River after their aircraft broke up. The charter company that operated
the helicopter has since been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Tourist choppers bring in dollars but have long been a contentious issue; like
most, it has an advocacy group — Stop the Chop — all its own. Part of the
pushback has to do with pollution. A single-engine workhorse like the Bell 206
Long Ranger pumps out about 20 times the CO2 of an SUV. This means that those
helicopters I watched from 26 Broadway might well have been a mile-long
procession of 140 Escalades on a date with Lady Liberty."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-vaccines-wildfires/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
