Crazy Helicopter Ride Stories

The Washington DC plane crash made me think about two helicopter rides I got back in my younger days. When I was in grade school back in the 60s, our state fair had an independent vendor that was selling rides on a M.A.S.H. style whirlybird helicopter which my dad let my older brother and I ride on. What a thrill ride! 

Later in the 80s there was a Bell Ranger type helicopter giving rides at the same state fair. I was still young and dumb and ready and waiting for my ride but there weren't any other people wanting to pay for a ride and fill up the rest of the seats. Eventually the pilot said let's go and I offered to double his fee for an extended ride. We flew around town for what seemed like a half hour and it was great. I can't remember how much a ride cost but it was cheap for the thrills involved, maybe $50 total.

The next day however, I heard on the news that after lifting off and gaining altitude, the helicopter's engine quit and the pilot and passengers autorotated  down and soft crashed landed onto the dirt race track (only bent the landing gear some). The investigation found sand in his fuel tank picked up from their last fair engagement in New Mexico. It could have been me. 

Anyone else have any stories that they lived to tell about?

No.

Helicopters are several thousand parts, flying in loose formation. 

If something hasn't broken in your helicopter, it's about to.

I will get in a small airplane, and have been on many that looked like they were held together by tape, but I won't do helicopters. Somehow the nicest helicopter seems more dangerous to me than a 70 year old Piper that's spent its entire life in the Caribbean. 

I used to go up to Revelstoke, Canada, and do helicopter snowboarding through a company called Selkirk Tangiers. It was a blast. They used ex-military Hueys, and you really couldn't ask for a better experience. The unintended consequence was that it soured me on California snowboarding. Once you've had endless waist-deep powder, everything else seems like a huge step down. I don't have any exciting near-misses, but one year, in a valley nearby, several teenagers were killed in an avalanche. Our guides, who were normally genial and fun were quiet and pensive. They had been part of the rescue effort, and digging frozen young bodies out of the snow clearly effected them deeply.

I have a cousin who is a helicopter mechanic. One of his friend did not tighten the Jesus nut. You all know that that is?

On some helicopters there is literally one nut holding the main rotor on. Kind of need to tighten it and not hope the night shift gets to it.

I used to be a search and rescue member and we did a lot of helicopter work. One day we took the door of a Bell Ranger to put a stretcher across the back and left it on a remote mountaintop. The pilot went back for it a couple hours later and someone had stolen it. Presumably packed it out for some unfathomable reason. What do you do with a Bell Ranger door?

You guys sound like a bunch of Sally's.  HeLiCoPtErS aRe ScArY.

Got a front seat ride a a Hughes 300 in 86 a a local fair...with my grandmother. Yes, it appears Mamaw is tougher than this lot. But the MD600 NOTAR ride 20 years later, that was smooth. Unnaturally smooth. 5 stars, definitely recommend. 

I got a life flight ride after an awful car crash in 1997. I don't remember any of it, which is probably a blessing, but I have always wanted to go for a ride in a helicopter after that. I think it would be a little bit of closure to be able to add the feeling of a helicopter ride to that missing chunk of time in my head.

My sister and I got to fly in a Bell Ranger-like helicopter during a trip to Hawaii when we were kids. We saw the water falls, lava flows (apparently--I couldn't tell what I was looking at), and a bunch of farms that grew coffee and pineapples. The experience of hovering next to a waterfall, surrounded by forested mountain, and watching mountain goats do mountain goat stuff was surreal. It was recorded on tape, which I tried to digitize just last month, but the 25 year old tape is too degraded (no video, only some audio). The whole thing was like the opening scene to Jurassic Park. If you spend some time in Maui and can swing it, take a helicopter tour.

Mid 1980's.  Routine flight over the Gulf of Mexico, nothing special.   Pilot was ex-Navy, Viet Nam era now working commercial.  Bell 206 Jet Ranger and I'm in the co-pilot seat when he turns to me, holding a ball point pen between his fingers in front of us and asks, "Believe I can make this pen float in mid-air?"  I said, "No."

He dumped the collective and we dropped like a rock. The pen also dropped like a rock, but I didn't notice.  We had been straight and level at around 2,500 ft. He caught it back up somewhere below 500 ft.  He says, "Haven't been able to yet."

I think he was practicing his auto rotation.

Patiently waiting for AAZCD-Jon to show up!

When I worked on supply boats offshore, often we would crew change offshore. We'd helicopter out to a rig or production platform and a crane would lower us down to the deck of the boat in a "personnel basket" (the old kind with the floppy sides) I don't know which was worse, the helicopter flight or the personnel basket. All it took was a E36 M3ty crane operator and rough seas to make that real fun. On one trip out we were on a Chevron charter so they flew us out. I happened to notice that just before we took off, both of the pilot's heads were wobbling. That must have been a Sikorsky. Didn't inspire a lot of confidence. Another trip we all piled in a small helicopter and this girl that looked like she was barely old enough to drive hopped in and flew us out. 

Fly and die with PHI was the saying around the gulf in our biz. Petrolium Helicopters Inc.

Not me but a guy I worked with.     I worked in the Gulf of America offshore oil business as a consultant.   Occasionally one of us had to fly offshore to an oil platform to take pictures and measurements of what was needed.  So on the morning of the flight my friend shows up at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans.   The fog over Lake Pontchartrain is very heavy.  All fixed wing flights are canceled.   He figured  his flight would be canceled as well but had agreed to meet the client there.     Pilot comes out and tells them its time to leave..  They are like what you talking about?  How can you fly in this fog? 

 Pilot (Viet Nam vet pilot btw) tells them this is the best time to fly, there is no one else in the air.  But wait, there is more.   When they are taking off from the helideck of the offshore facility for the return trip the pilot tells them they are a little over weight because they had extra people on board for the flight back so have to do something a little different to take off.   So he proceeds to take off and swoops down almost to the water, to gain speed he says, and scares the you know what out of them.   

If you've never watched a heli-logging pilot, you should.

Those guys are intimately aware of "Time is money".

They hook to the load, take out the slack, lift the logs enough to get them off the mountain, then toss the load and the helicopter off the side of the mountain. Follow the load down, flare near the landing site to cushion the drop, unhook and start back up the mountain. 

The load and the helicopter are in near-free-fall most of the way down.

Heli-loggers and water bomber pilots are the craziest guys I've met.

My brother-in-law had a mountain bike accident where he broke a vertibrae or two. He was illegally riding on private land outside the regional park. As they were helicoptering him out, the attendant asked if he had been inside the park when he crashed. He said no. The attendant said something along the lines of: "If you were outside the park, this is a $20,000 ride. If you were inside, Uncle Sam foots the bill. Now where were you?.........."

I've been in two helicopters. Both times extremely memorable.

First time was at Spring Mountain Motorsports Park. I was there for a Lotus press thing (Exige S and that chop-top Exige thing) and the owner of the track was giving folks rides in his helicopter. Obviously that was tough to turn down. During my ride he flies out toward all the dry washes around the track and says "You want to see how we used to do it in Vietnam?" and of course I'm thinking "Uh, no." before he swoops down into a wash canyon and does the full Death Star trench run thing. Please recall how this was my first time ever in a helicopter.

Time 2 my wife and I were in Zermatt, Switzerland, which is at the base of the Matterhorn. We're walking through the little village and a guy comes up to us and says "Hey we have two seats left for the next flight and we'll give them to you guys for the price of one" and my American brain kicks in and immediately thinks "this guy is trying to scam me" while my wife does the math and realizes that it's actually a good deal and he's just trying to fill seats for a scheduled thing that would otherwise fly empty and lose money. So she grabs me and says "It's a berking helicopter ride around the Matterhorn of course we're going." So we flew around the Matterhorn in a helicopter and it was as amazing as you'd imagine, except the SD card in my camera died.

So, yeah, I've kind of peaked when it comes to helicopters. when you think about it, there's really no reason for a normal guy like me to ever be in a helicopter that's an actual good reason. If a helicopter is looking for me it's either because I'm on the run from the law or trapped at the bottom of a canyon. Pass on both.

Have fond memories of taking helicopter rides over the ocean at Myrtle Beach when I was a kid.  Back then, a ride was $12.  Now you'd need to take a second mortgage for a 10 minute ride. 

Years back, I was producing a series of training videos for our local life flight operator. While heading back from a shoot, the pilot began circling a housing plan. Apparently, he and his wife were separated and he wanted to see if she was hitting the pool at her new boyfriend's house.  We were banking hard and flying slow and the whole helicopter was shuddering violently...he's jut staring out the side window and muttering swear words as we almost fall from the sky.  

Another pilot told me that they were allowed to fly and land anywhere, and demonstrated by buzzing over a park inches from the trees, then flaring up and landing in a tiny field. Many of the pilots honed their craft flying in Vietnam and were both amazingly skilled and 100% fearless. I was less so. 

Fun fact, helicopter windshields are a polymer that melts when you get a 1000w light too close to them. Oops. 

My latest helicopter ride was after my father died. Mom said that she didn't really have bucket list, but had never been on a helicopter, so we booked a tour. It was my son's first ride in a Helo as well, and we had no issues thankfully. 

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

Like this?

I'll try to keep this as short as possible.

When I got married, our honeymoon was all of Rt 66, up the coast of California, and back across the northern states.  We did all of the kitchy things and national parks.  At the Grand Canyon we wanted to do the helicopter tour, but it was stoopid expensive and we were broke newlyweds.  Everywhere we went, we looked at the helicopter tours and they were blisteringly expensive.  We gave up on our dreams and continued on.

.... until we got to the Badlands in Dakota.  Near the end of the driving loop, there was this tiny shed that said "Helicopter tours $80."  We decided we could afford $160.  Turns out, it was $80 per tour, so we were stoked.  We headed out to the helipad waiting for the previous tour to come back.  We heard it coming.  What was it that landed on that pad?  The same M.A.S.H whirly bird like you posted up top.  A plastic bubble with a truss on the back.  It was visibly (and olfactory-ly) leaking fuel.  We sat three abreast with the pilot... all three of us sharing the same tattered lap belt, so my right butt cheek and right leg were hanging out of the doorless bubble.  There were no headsets, and talking was impossible, so the pilot would just point to a heard of Antelope or some other critter and bank that way so we could see them.

We were convinced we were going to die, but it ended up being the best $80 we spent on the whole trip.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Those old Bell helicopters used in MASH originally had wooden rotor blades. I belive as things aged out they were all upgraded to alloy rotor blades.

Those are one of the simplest and most reliable machines ever made. They have a (IIRC) Lycoming flat six mounted vertically as their powerplant. 

I seem to remember those Bells and now the Robinsons are the highest production, piston engine helicopters ever.

I took a ride in something like this at the fair one year. I was probably 40, had never ridden in one, and rides were $30. I'll try almost anything once. I was not impressed. I can say I've done it but I don't have much interest or need to fly in one again. I can see why they are called the natural predator of the rich. 

Flying in general doesn't interest me. I'd rather drive. You get the big picture in the air but miss so many of the little things. Helicopters are better than airliners but still too detached from the rest of the world for me. I'd rather be down in the dirt. 

In reply to Toyman! :

That is a Robinson R22

In reply to ShawnG :

I won't swear it was the exact chopper. That was almost 20 years ago. I just remember it looking like the tail should snap off. 

Anyone else remember VertiBird?

A friend around the corner had one. Hours of entertainment.