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[NickLappos]

Which should I fly, Airplanes or Helicopters? HeliOps Magazine Early 2007

Was it this one, Heli+?

Which should I fly, Airplanes or Helicopters?

I am often asked this by youngsters who want to wear the dark glasses and pull the ball cap over their eyes for a living. The answer is important, because helo hours cost at least three times more than airplane hours, and so a helo pilot’s license will cost three times more as well. I must admit, I am biased, but I am an instructor in both kinds, so I will try to answer from the heart. For starters, my training didn’t cost a cent - just a trip to the recruiter who could best answer the question, “How soon can I get into flight school?”

The typical helicopter job matches the typical airplane job in hours and pay, except for the major airlines, where ALPA somehow got the world to believe that an airline pilot has the skills of a brain surgeon, but needs a better sex life. Take one step below the Major Leagues, and the basic employment terms for all pilots are similar. Handling the machine and navigating the mission are far different, however.

I think the typical helo driver has to think more, has to work more at the controls, and has to expose himself to more hazardous situations to make a living. Airplanes give the world a haircut until it suits them, so that every airplane lands on the same runway every day. Cement trucks respond and another two miles of landing strip is created to help the big guys find the earth. The typical NY to DC or Paris to London shuttle spends 2% of its journey on runways and taxiways! If it weren’t for the numbers painted on the runway ends, there would be no difference, would there? Airplanes like to drive on electronic Super Highways to get to those sterile runways. Even their charts scrub off the earth and leave behind only the electronic beams that guide them. After all, the world is just a place to hold VOR’s, isn’t it?

Helicopter pilots know from the ludicrous variability of helo landing spots that all it takes to design a heliport is the ability to spell "H". It is a jump ball for a helo driver to figure out the best way to land, and the compromise between obstructions, wind and angry neighbors can spell the difference between success and embarrassment on a grand scale. Helo airways? Marked on the ridgelines around every city are the helo routes that make the most sense - follow the interstate; turn left at the Walmart, don’t pass over the rig with the 100 foot flames, watch for the ship’s masts near the harbor mouth. A good Esso road map and some common sense once got me from Saigon to Chu Lai. How many airline pilots would put up with a telephone pole exactly in line with final? What airline would allow its operations to land long, over the high tension lines? How many helo pilots have longed for a chain saw to help fix their company’s favorite heliport? Name one helicopter precision instrument approach.

Helicopter pilots usually do the un-usual, which is why the job needs a helicopter to begin with. We had a saying in the Sikorsky pilots office, "If the place needs helicopters, it isn't worth visiting." We earn our pay figuring it out on short final, going into rough country where the Weather Channel is the best we've got. We land on rigs at night with rain on the bubble and nothing to look at but the platform, because the horizon took the night off.

Helicopter flying is real flying, about as close as humans will ever get to what geese and ducks do for a living. I know. I've been squeezing the cyclic since 1968, and for 7,000 hours, its always been a gas. I've landed next to rushing streams in the Philippines where monkeys in the trees laughed at me, and watched a crowd of kids wearing “Apocalypse Now” T shirts run giggling to see my aircraft. I've landed in impossible places and tossed rocks off needle-thin spires that no human has ever climbed, and I've put my aircraft's belly into the water to save some poor soul who jumped from a bridge, and I could have done none of these things in an airplane!

I think in 100 years all the flying will be done with microchips and precise little servos that move the stick. By then, the Joseph Conrad of our age will emerge and he or she will tell tales about the helicopter folks who kept the greasy side down during hot insertions, and who brought out the wounded, or pulled crews off the rigs when the hurricane had started to make white froth, or who winched up scared sailors from crippled freighters, or who landed beside icy highways to whisk injured kids to surgery in minutes.

I'd sigh if I had to walk into a terminal with a Jepp case, climb into a big aluminum bus and drive down highway Victor boring. If you can't earn a living doing what you enjoy, you're already dead.

Nick Lappos HeliOps Magazine, Spring 2007