[FoRK] Return of helicopter service to manhattan since '78 crash...

[Rohit Khare]

[Note that they don't break out, say, a fed-subsidy-per-passenger  
cost for these 'fat cats' out of wall st :) :) ]

February 6, 2006
New Helicopter Service Promises Wall St. to J.F.K., in 9 Minutes

By PATRICK McGEEHAN
As soon as next month, travelers could be boarding helicopters at the  
foot of Wall Street and flying straight to Kennedy International  
Airport, zipping past city traffic — and also past other passengers  
waiting to clear security at the airport.

That service, which will cost more than $140 each way, is being  
arranged by a start-up company and the federal government. The  
Transportation Security Administration, a division of the Department  
of Homeland Security, is setting up screening equipment for  
passengers and luggage at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, making it  
the first heliport in the country to be "federalized," said Ann  
Davis, a spokeswoman for the administration.

Within a few months, the security administration plans to install a  
similar checkpoint at the heliport at the east end of 34th Street,  
Ms. Davis said. Each heliport will have at least eight screeners and  
the full complement of scanning and bomb-detection equipment used at  
airports, all provided by the federal government, she said.

The checkpoints will allow customers of the U.S. Helicopter  
Corporation to check themselves and their bags through to their final  
destination, be it Chicago or Shanghai, said Jerry Murphy, chief  
executive of the company. In eight or nine minutes, the helicopters  
will whisk passengers straight to a gate at the airport, where they  
can walk right onto their planes, he said. Their bags will be loaded  
directly onto the aircraft.

The service's appeal will be "selective," said Charles A. Gargano,  
the vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,  
which operates the downtown heliport. He said the customers would be  
executives "in the financial community and downtown" who want to save  
the time it can take to ride to the airport and go through security.

U.S. Helicopter plans to begin operating in mid-March with 12 hourly  
flights from downtown to the American Airlines terminal at J.F.K.,  
Mr. Murphy said. It hopes to reach agreements soon to deliver  
passengers to other airlines. Its Sikorsky helicopters can carry as  
many as 12 passengers, and it expects to have three of them  
initially, Mr. Murphy said, giving it a capacity of fewer than 500  
outbound passengers a day.

By contrast, about 50,000 travelers pass through security screening  
each day at Kennedy, according to the Port Authority. The security  
administration plans to spend $560,000 this year to set up and  
operate the checkpoint at the Wall Street heliport, on Pier 6 in the  
East River, Ms. Davis said.

Creating a checkpoint at the East 34th Street Heliport will cost  
about the same, she said. Ms. Davis added, "It was our decision that  
based on U.S. Helicopter's business model, it would be of benefit to  
us to provide resources to these two heliports."

To supply the screeners at the heliports, the administration will  
have to reduce staffing at airports because Congress has limited  
their number nationwide to 45,000 since 2002. Some Congressional  
Democrats have argued for a lifting of that cap, calling it arbitrary  
and counterproductive, but it remains in place.

To stay within the limit, the security administration reassigns  
positions as it federalizes additional airports. The administration  
manages security at about 450 airports but, so far, no heliports, Ms.  
Davis said.

In July, it decided to reduce the maximum number of screeners at the  
region's three largest airports, Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark  
Liberty International, to 3,542 from 3,791, a decrease of 6.5  
percent. That drew protests from officials at the Port Authority,  
which operates the three airports. They argued that more screeners  
were needed because in recent years passenger traffic at the airports  
has been rising.

Though some of the 16 employees the administration expects to place  
at the Manhattan heliports might otherwise be screening passengers at  
one of the three airports, Mr. Gargano said he approved of the plan.

"Well, why not? It's not costing the Port Authority anything," he  
said. "Adding another mode of transportation to the airports is a  
good thing."

He said the service could help reinvigorate the economy of Lower  
Manhattan and was in keeping with the ultimate plan of providing a  
faster trip from downtown to Kennedy. Mr. Gargano, like his political  
patron, Gov. George E. Pataki, has been an advocate of a rail link  
from the Wall Street area to the airport. Having helicopter service,  
he said, would not obviate the need for the train.

"You're talking about different levels of riders," he said. "The  
number of people moving this way is not going to be great."

Still, U.S. Helicopter does have big dreams. The company hopes to  
have scheduled service between all three public heliports in  
Manhattan — the third is at the west end of 30th Street — and the  
three big airports within a year. Then, according to documents the  
company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it hopes  
to add service in other cities.

Doing so would require a lot more capital, agreements with more  
airlines and federal security checkpoints at several more heliports.  
Mr. Murphy of U.S. Helicopter said the company had raised $19  
million, $6 million of it from investors in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  
In New York City, there has been no scheduled helicopter shuttle  
service to the airports in almost 20 years, aviation officials said.  
The concept had its heyday in the 1970's and 1980's, when Pan  
American and New York Airways provided service from heliports,  
including one atop the Pan Am building, now the MetLife Building.

The rooftop helipad was closed in 1977 after a spinning rotor broke  
loose on a New York Airways helicopter and killed five people,  
including a woman on the street below. Helicopter service to Kennedy  
from the East Side and downtown heliports continued until Pan Am ran  
into financial trouble in the mid-1980's.

Mr. Murphy, who was chief executive of Kiwi Airlines, which is now  
defunct, said he expected U.S. Helicopter to carry as many as 160,000  
passengers in its first year. Initially, the one-way fare will be  
$139, plus taxes and fees, but it will rise to $159 within weeks, he  
said. He said the company planned to start selling tickets this week  
at its Web site, www.flyush.com.

"We believe that the majority of our customers will be the people  
that fly airplanes on a very high-frequency basis," Mr. Murphy said.  
Most of those people already travel to the airports by livery cars  
that charge $85 or more but can take 45 minutes, compared with 8 or 9  
minutes in a helicopter, he said.