Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
A skosh more than half a tenth per ride = let's say 15 rides per flight hour. Keep an R-44 full at $40 per person ($120 per ride) and you're making roughly US$1,800 per flight hour. With an R-44. Not too shabby...if you don't crash the ship. No wonder R-44 operators like doing fair rides!.
If they were really doing 15 loads per hour, that is pretty excessive. Ten is a comfortable number that can be maintained for a reasonable length of time without getting frantic or fatigued. The most I've personally seen is 13, only once, but that was with a 10,000 hour pilot at the controls who had done this a LOT and some equally experienced loaders. The load factor for an R44 is, as you might expect, right around 2.5, because sometimes you have all the seats filled and sometimes just two. But even with a load factor of 2.5 and 10 loads an hour, it is pretty lucrative, probably about double the profit of plain old by-the-hour sightseeing or photo flights, and a hell of a lot more than training. Plus it is not unusual to operate at capacity for most of the day, thereby making the equivalent of a week's charters and lessons in one weekend.
There is a lot of thought and attention to detail that must go into a profitable and, more importantly, safe operation. From onsite fuel (one cannot be wasting time going for fuel and coming back) to making sure headsets and seat belts are squared away in unsold seats (so they don't get to places where they shouldn't be), it all matters and it's all important.