Go vertical

Photography by Chris Rose

Igor Sikorsky said, “The helicopter approaches closer than any other [vehicle] to fulfillment of mankind’s ancient dreams of the flying horse and the magic carpet.”

He should know. Sikorsky is one of vertical flight’s early pioneers, and helicopter pilots have him and many others to thank. Unlike airplanes, where the major technical challenge was getting enough power to lift the weight, helicopters aren’t meant to fly. It’s only through sheer will that engineers and pilots make it happen.

Yet learning to fly a helicopter is, in many ways, not unlike flying an airplane. It takes a minimum of 35 or 40 hours; there’s ground work, dual lessons, solo lessons, and a checkride. But what you do in training—and more important, what you do after training—varies greatly. Airplanes are great for getting up and going somewhere, but helicopters are unmatched for fun and versatility. It’s just too bad that not every pilot has been able to figure that out. Only about 33,300 of the roughly 600,000 active pilots have a helicopter certificate of some sort. Given how much fun they are to fly, how versatile they are, and the unique challenge they offer, something must be holding people back.

With that in mind, here are eight myths about helicopters and their pilots, in an effort to push you over to aviation’s true magic carpet.

. Helicopters are lame: This is probably the most persistent myth of them all. Airplane pilots think that helicopters are too limited in terms of speed, range, and payload, so they cast them off as some secondary tier of aviation.

Like airplanes, helicopters come in all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Training ships are relatively simple, less expensive to operate, and somewhat underpowered. Multiengine turbine models can carry heavy construction equipment or giant logs. It’s true that they are generally limited in speed, but their versatility more than makes up for it.

2. They are expensive: In a sense, yes, helicopters are expensive. But so are airplanes. If you are Joe Super Pilot, you can in theory get a rotorcraft add-on rating to a fixed-wing certificate in about 20 hours. In a Robinson helicopter, the minimum is 30 hours. Plan for something like 40. Pilots who start fresh in helicopters are eligible for the checkride at either 35 or 40 hours. Most training helicopters rent for between $225 and $275 an hour, so plan to spend anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000. The purchase price of a helicopter is roughly that of a used, high-performance single-engine airplane, although maintenance can cost a bit more.

3. They are unsafe: Despite having dozens of moving parts that must perform as well together as the players in a Parisian opera house, helicopters are quite safe. The accident rate for commercial helicopter operations is higher than the equivalent fixed-wing rate, but that speaks to the unique nature of their capabilities. It’s harder to assure the safety of a landing when the site is a highway or a confined area rather than a 6,000-foot runway. In training, things look better for rotorcraft. Although the accident rate during dual instruction is higher in helicopters, the fatal accident rate is about the same as for fixed-wing aircraft.

Much of helicopter training focuses on hovering and autorotations. Hovering accidents happen often, but they are very rarely fatal. Autorotations—basically, the engine-out procedure for landing a helicopter—are a bit more risky, but still not what most pilots would consider unsafe.

Things look even better for private and corporate helicopter flying. There, the accident rate has declined significantly in the past decade, and now is about the same as the rate for fixed-wing aircraft. Taken as a whole, flying a helicopter is not that much different than flying an airplane where safety is concerned.

4. Helicopters fall out of the sky when the engine quits: It’s a common misconception that a helicopter without a working engine is the world’s most expensive brick. In reality, there’s an emergency landing procedure for helicopters, just as there is for airplanes. The difference is that while the pilot of an airplane need do little more than find an appropriate field and fly toward it when the engine quits, a helicopter pilot must act quickly if the machine is going to keep flying.

Called an autorotation (the blades rotate by themselves without power), the helicopter emergency landing has many benefits over those performed in airplanes. Primary among them is the ability to put the machine down in an open area the size of a big backyard. And if the engine quits and the best landing site is straight down, the helicopter can go any direction the pilot chooses to set up for it—including backwards.

The energy at the point of touchdown also is considerably less in a helicopter. A single-engine airplane will be moving forward anywhere between 30 and 60 knots, whereas if the helicopter pilot does things well, he or she can touch down with less than 10 knots of forward speed.

5. Helicopters are impractical: If your aviation need is to fly from New York to Los Angeles once a week, it is true that a helicopter isn’t the best tool for the job. But here’s a little secret—neither are most GA airplanes. Consider the sometimes false assumption that airplanes are great for travel. A salesman will gladly explain to you why a Cessna 172 is the perfect aircraft to get you from Buffalo to Boston, but that’s only true in July. Otherwise, the airlines will get you there cheaper and more reliably, albeit with considerably less joy. Let’s say you do fly yourself. The Robinson R44 will make the trip in the same amount of time as the Cessna, can carry about the same amount of stuff, and will get you where you’re going sooner. Helicopters can land closer to the destination, if not right at it. They also don’t have to spend time taxiing or waiting for the use of the runway.

For many pilots, fun is the primary mission. And here, helicopters excel. The view is often better, the speeds are more leisurely, and you can loiter over an area. It’s like the difference between a convertible and a motorcycle. Both get you in the open air, but only one makes your heart race.

6. Helicopters are fragile/small toys: Just like airplanes, helicopters range from small, single-seat Experimentals to multiengine, turbine-powered beasts. Some of this myth no doubt comes from the fact that training helicopters are relatively small. The Robinson R22 is by far the most common, and it’s also the lightest, weighing less than a thousand pounds empty.

The reality is that they are extremely maneuverable and easily controllable under a large variety of conditions. Helicopters even take turbulence better than airplanes, in most cases, so a student who is uneasy about the bumps may enjoy helicopters more.

Where maintenance is concerned, the tolerances are tighter in helicopters, and there is definitely more to go wrong than in an airplane. But they can take a huge amount of punishment, just like Cessnas in the training environment.

7. They are hard to fly: This is partly true. Many fixed-wing pilots who have transitioned to helicopters say hovering is the hardest thing they’ve ever done in an aircraft. Everything comes with a price, and the price of such amazing maneuverability and flexibility in a helicopter is some initial challenges for the pilot who is learning how to fly them. But once the basics are mastered, it’s no different than flying an airplane. In many ways it’s easier.

Consider landing. An airplane is going to land when it feels like it. The wings will stop producing lift and the wheels will touch. If the pilot has set up correctly, those wheels are only a few inches above the concrete when that time comes. But if he hasn’t—well, you know how that goes. In a helicopter the pilot controls everything. He dictates exactly when it’s time to set down. If things are feelings rushed, or a gust of wind comes, he simply waits it out two feet above the ground. If, as he’s coming down, things get squirrely, he simply stops and gets his bearings again. It’s all under the pilot’s control, as is the speed on the approach, the exact spot of touchdown, the exact moment of liftoff, the approach and descent profiles, and so on.

8. Helicopter pilots are weird: That’s just jealousy talking.