Imagine commuting 1,000 feet above traffic.
50 years ago, during the golden age of helicopter travel, you could.
Until a tragic accident in 1977 brought that era to a close.
But with new technology on the horizon, a new age of airborne commuting could be just
around the corner.
Ever since the first skyscrapers shot upward, visions of New York City's future showcased
convenient access to the skies.
Those visions were realized in 1953, when a helicopter airline called New York Airways
established a schedule of routes carrying passengers between Manhattan's riverside heliports
and New York City's airports in a fleet of repurposed Boeing and Sikorsky military helicopters.
For as little as $5, you could hop on one of their 20-seat shuttles and be at your departure
gate within 10 minutes.
At its peak, New York Airways served over a half million passengers a year, with dozens
of daily scheduled flights.
We always flew past the Statue of Liberty on our way to Newark to give the passengers
a good view of that.
It was great, for a young pilot, it was exciting.
You see on television overhead pictures of New York.
Well, there you were, right in the middle of it.
It was awesome.
As I say this, it's giving me chills.
In the early 1960s, the construction of the Pan Am skyscraper in the heart of Midtown
Manhattan offered an exciting and unprecedented new expansion for New York Airways.
Situated directly above the iconic Grand Central Terminal, the massive 59-story office complex
was a symbolic link between the era of trains below and the Jet Age above.
At the time, Pan Am was the largest and most famous international airline.
To top off their eponymous building, the tower had a unique modern amenity: a rooftop heliport,
for passengers connecting on to Pan Am flights.
In 1965, New York Airways partnered with Pan Am and added the midtown rooftop to its routes.
The rooftop helipad became a widely admired cultural landmark, making its way into Hollywood
films such as the 1968 Clint Eastwood thriller, Coogan's Bluff.
Business trip?
You might call it that.
Director Ridley Scott has said that landing on the Pan Am roof was the inspiration for
his futuristic sets in his sci-fi epic, Blade Runner.
The Pan Am roof was, rounding it off, it was pretty close to 900 feet high.
It was extremely challenging, especially at night and in the weather.
Probably the most challenging thing I've ever done, except for getting shot at in Vietnam.
But I enjoyed it; it was fun.
Not everyone was pleased with the new route, however.
The things that bothered us the most were the noise factor and the danger.
It was sort of a fun idea: yeah, it's futuristic.
Then when you think about it, do you really want a bus overhead, in populated areas,
in Midtown Manhattan?
To me, that still doesn't make sense.
The board ended up approving it.
I really did become scared that something was going to happen.
A big helicopter bringing people in from New York's Kennedy Airport killed five people
after landing on the roof of the 59-story Pan Am Building in the center of town.
My boss had asked me to take a quick trip to Nashville.
He suggested, to make it easy, use the helicopter.
I went across town, took the elevator up to the Pan Am Building.
After a short time, we started to move up the escalator and we got about halfway up,
when suddenly there was a loud noise and we were showered with little pieces of glass breaking.
Everything stopped.
And I went up and I saw that the helicopter had flipped over on its side.
The thing that I most remember, I can still see even today is the one body laying there
on the rooftop, and it was cut open in the torso.
It was just overwhelming.
Loading passengers with the rotors turning
was not one of my favorite things, but
apparently the thinking was the cost of putting on the rotor brake to stop the rotors but
still keep the engines running ended up being a maintenance cost
that they did not want to deal with.
This is the point that the landing gear broke, on the top part of the strut.
It basically just rolled over this way.
Four passengers waiting to board were killed instantly by the projectile rotor blades.
One piece of a rotor blade flew off the roof and smashed into an office window on the side
of the Pan Am Building.
Another piece fell 60 stories down to the street, killing a 29-year old woman as she
made her way home during the rush hour commute.
In the wake of the disaster, the city immediately
suspended all service to the Pan Am Building rooftop
The NTSB launched an investigation and concluded that the accident was due
to high cycle fatigue propagation.
In other words, wear and tear.
As for the public image of helicopter travel:
It didn't do the image any good.
Consequently, there is no rooftop helicopter operations in New York City or any places
around the country that I know of, maybe a couple of hospitals or something.
Owing to litigation costs, rising fuel prices, and declining traffic due to its damaged reputation,
New York Airways went out of business two years later.
In Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, similar helicopter services operated throughout
the 1960s and 70s.
Financial issues and a series of fatal crashes
forced most of these companies out of business as well.
Since the demise of New York Airways, other ventures have attempted to replicate scheduled
helicopter service, including a brief attempt in the late 1980s by Donald Trump.
All failed.
Despite the decline of scheduled service, overall traffic surged in the 1980s due to
increased private charters for corporate travel and for tourist sightseeing around Manhattan.
Concerns about noise, however, caused a major backlash, forcing the city to dramatically
reduce flights and heliport access in recent years.
As New York City's population, traffic and wealth have increased, the demand for reliable,
time-saving means of transportation is arguably higher than ever.
A newcomer to the short-distance aviation market called BLADE, launched in 2013, is
harkening back to the golden age of commercial travel powered by modern ridesharing technology.
Before BLADE, it would cost $6000 to fly to the Hamptons, probably about $3000 to go to
the airport.
We now fly people to the airport for $195, we fly people to the Hamptons for $595.
It's still expensive, but we're now getting to the point where we're really almost at
ride-sharing, black car pricing.
BLADE, like Uber, doesn't actually own any of its vehicles.
Instead, it contracts with helicopter charter companies and focuses on providing a consistent,
customer-facing experience through a mobile app.
Ultimately, BLADE faces many of the same obstacles that the industry has faced for years:
the high hourly cost of helicopter operations, and
the noise.
But there's a new technology on the horizon that could mitigate those issues.
Five, six years from now is really going to be the dawn of what we call e-VTOL:
electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing rotorcraft.
The beauty of these rotorcraft is that they are quiet, and they are less expensive.
BLADE, along with Uber, Larry Page and others, are betting on e-VTOL technology to introduce
a new golden age of airborne commuting.
The technology is still very primitive, but if battery capacity, safety and air traffic
obstacles can be overcome, rooftop point to point transport could become a reality again.
Meanwhile, 800 feet above the bustling streets of Manhattan, the heliport atop the former
Pan Am Building remains closed, a 40-year-old reminder of how an unexpected tragedy can
change the course of an industry - and a city - forever.