If a person about to board a plane in Omaha is asked where they are going and replies “Omaha,” they may receive a few puzzled looks and even an audible, “But aren’t you there now?” However, when you live in metropolises that support multiple airports, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Tokyo, it is possible to fly from one to another.

While the distances between them may not be that great, surface travel, especially during peak hours, can take a lot of time, and there’s nothing like landing at an airport and heading to the next gate for a connecting flight. and even have your checked baggage interlined for that.

New York qualifies for one such inter-airport network, and its namesake New York Airways made a valiant two-decade attempt to offer rotary-wing service within it.

As the third to do so, it followed Chicago’s Los Angles Airways and Helicopter Air Services and was awarded an operating certificate by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in December 1951 to fly between triple Idlewild Airport, La Guardia and Catchment Area. from Newark.

Reflecting the development of early aviation, in which open-cockpit biplanes carried mail over designated routes and accommodated a few passengers to increase revenue when space permitted, he transitioned to the passenger payload form of the July 8, 1952 with seven-seat Sikorsky S-55. , eventually expanding beyond its inter-airport network to New Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton in New Jersey. Service penetrating Manhattan to the Hudson River that hugs the West 30th Street Heliport began four years later on December 5.

Noise and vibration were offset by comfort, speed, travel times measured in minutes, and unparalleled views of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline. Approaches to landing point “H” circled on the pier jutting out of the water put the size of the aircraft into perspective as the monoliths of Manhattan all but swallowed it during its descent.

Earlier that year, on April 21, New York Airways inaugurated the more advanced and higher capacity tandem twin-rotor Vertol 44B.

“It was the first transport helicopter to have its cabin arranged like that of a conventional commercial airliner, seating 15 passengers, mainly two deep on the starboard side of the cabin with the aisle and luggage space to the left. “, according to REG Davies in “Airlines of the United States since 1914” (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998, p. 475).

However, passenger acceptance and expansion quickly required even larger and more advanced equipment, prompting New York Airways’ initial order of $4,350,000 for ten Vertol V-107-IIs on January 15, 1960. halved to five.

The type that eventually became its virtual badge and symbol has its origins not only in a design, but also in the very manufacturer that created it. Vertol, a Philadelphia-based rotary-wing company, was simultaneously designing two tandem-rotor helicopters, namely the Chinook for the US Army and the CH-46A Sea Knight for the US Navy and Marines. The USA.

The latter, the result of a design competition for a Marine Corps medium assault transport, first flew in August 1962 and was first delivered two years later, transporting troops and cargo between ships positioned in the Sea of South China and Vietnam. Of its three prototypes, one was modified to civil standard V-107-II and first flew on October 25, 1960, at a time when Boeing had acquired the company, resulting in the name Boeing-Vertol.

Powered by a 1,250 shp General Electric T58-8 turboshaft engine, it featured a 50-foot rotor diameter. With an overall length of 84 feet, it had a gross weight of 18,400 pounds.

It first flew in full production mode the following year on May 19, was certified by the FAA in January 1962, and entered New York Airway’s scheduled service on July 1. The remaining ten built were sold to Kawasaki of Japan to serve as a license. it produced model aircraft, but that plan never proceeded to production.

The images of the V-107-II taking off from Pan Am’s rooftop helipad symbolized the island of Manhattan spread across skyscrapers and were an integral part of the city’s culture. They also represented an aspect of urban mobility: subways under its streets and helicopters over its buildings represented successful technological triumphs over traffic-clogged streets and significantly reduced travel times.

“Twenty-five passengers traveled in this twin-turbine design at a cruising speed of 140 mph,” according to Len Morgan in “Airliners of the World” (Arco Publishing Company, 1966, p. 90). “New York Airways took him from Kennedy International to the bottom of Wall Street in 16 minutes or to the top of the Pan Am Building in seven. Either trip required a hectic hour and a quarter drive during rush hour.”

New York Airways was able to operate in half-hour intervals, and its annual passenger totals reflected the popularity of its offerings: 8,758 in its first year of operation and more than 250,000 in its tenth.

While rotary-wing operations offered numerous advantages, including multiple daily frequencies; low-capacity, easy-to-fill cabins; quick aerial jumps; incomparable views; and the ability to land on any postage stamp-sized patch, whether paved or not, also had their downsides. They had high operating costs, produced significant noise, featured engine and mechanical complexity, operated in densely populated urban areas where safety was a primary concern, required subsidies for profitability, and were, at least initially, dependent on weather and visual meteorological conditions. .

The progressive decrease in subsidies necessitated the interruption of service, including those at the West 30th Street Heliport and Bridgeport, Connecticut. On April 11, 1965, they were eliminated entirely, affecting not only New York Airways, but also other comparable rotary-wing companies in Chicago and Los Angeles.

A financial lifeline was launched by Pan American World Airways, which bought two additional V-107-IIs for $850,000 each and then leased them to New York Airways to operate at the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows.

Sikorsky, through its parent United Aircraft Corporation, did the same with three S-61s. Powered by the same General Electric T58-8 engine, but with a different configuration, a shorter fuselage, and a larger 62-foot rotor diameter, it was the competitor of the V-107-II, but was otherwise similar with a 25-passenger capacity and a gross weight of 18,700 pounds. It was inaugurated in service on December 21, 1965.

Bypassing all surface traffic and reducing travel time to just seven minutes, the Boeing-Vertol V-107-II and Sikorsky S-61 service between Pan Am’s rooftop heliport and JFK allowed passengers to check in for their fixed-wing flights at the Pan Am Building 45 minutes before scheduled departure time. Seventeen daily round trips offered maximum comfort. Fares were $7.00 one way and $10.00 round trip.

Because the service complied with the CAB’s “public convenience and necessity” clause, both Pan Am and TWA were able to make equity investments in New York Airways, the former for 24.4 per cent and the latter for 15 per cent. .6 percent.

Sikorsky S-61s sported the TWA emblem on the sides of the aft fuselage.

In addition to the airline’s financial fatalities, there were also human fatalities, casting dark clouds of doubt over rotary wing technology for scheduled commercial operations.

On May 18, 1977, for example, a New York Airways S-61L sank during boarding on top of the Pan Am heliport, killing five people while doing so, including one person he was walking down Madison Avenue below where the untethered rotor blade hit him.

Two years later, in April 1979, three were killed when a rotor blade detached from another S-61 at Newark International Airport.

Fatigue and metal failure had caused the right landing gear to collapse in the first incident and the tail rotor to break in the second.

Forced to cease operations, New York Airways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; and, although various strategies were devised to resuscitate it, none was fruitful.

New York Airways’ rotary-wing operations between airports and neighboring states for 18 years, of four types, scheduled for mail and passengers, were convenient and popular and defined a new market and purpose for the design. But the ones that existed then were noisy, complex, fuel-thirsty, and ultimately flawed, and not necessarily advanced enough for safe, profitable, high-frequency daily operations, leaving later carriers, like New York Helicopter, to fill the gap. in the New York airport area and many others around the world. While the technology had intermittently improved and was one measure of the type’s success, its operating costs and profitability made up the others.

“After twelve years of passenger operations, therefore, helicopter airlines (including New York Airways, Chicago Helicopter Airways, Los Angeles Airways, and San Francisco and Oakland Airlines) had a good opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of powered aircraft. by rotor, but they had not been able to present their case,” concludes Davies (op. cit. p. 479).

Article sources:

Davies, REG “Airlines of the United States since 1914.” Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.

Morgan, Leon. “Passenger Aircraft of the World”. New York: Arco Publishing Company, Inc., 1966.