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By Bailey Holtz
How come helicopters aren’t as popular as airplanes in the public’s eye? Admittedly, the inventor of the helicopter does not have the household name recognition the Wright Brothers enjoy. Nor is there one iconic film about a daring helicopter pilot. And, let’s face it, fewer kids grow up saying: “I want to fly helicopters when I’m older!” than say, “I want to be a fighter pilot when I grow up!”
The irony is that while we put the deserving airplane on a golden pedestal, the helicopter is actually carrying all the weight of the important jobs at a lower altitude, dutifully working behind the scenes, truly helping the modern world go ‘round. Even though we might not see it every day, helicopters have far more practical application than do commercial planes, which merely whiz pleasure travelers to and fro. So basic!
Look, at Aviator Mercantile Post, we applaud the plane’s dominance of the high skies, but because we’re unashamedly biased, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to introduce you to some of the incredible history and unsung benefits of helicopter travel. Prepare to be blown away...literally! Or at least metaphorically.
Helicopters succeeded planes by a few decades, which is likely attributed to any lack of their notoriety. Though a comparable idea called the “aerial screw” was conceived by Leonardo DaVinci, the inventor of the first working helicopter was a Russian-American named Igor Sikorsky. Sikorsky was a prolific designer of aircrafts and designed thirty different crafts over the course of his life.
The VS-300 was the first modern, practical chopper he designed, and he took the prototype, which was nothing more than a metal skeleton, for a first test flight in 1939 in Connecticut. His prototype looked like an assemblage of glued-together matchsticks, but, lo and behold, the thing flew! His design became the basis for all helicopter manufacturing around the world: the helicopter was born.
Helicopters are workhorses. They may not have the wide acclaim of a fighter jet, but boy, do they own their niche. Because they are able to hover, travel forwards/backwards/left/right, and practically descend or takeoff vertically, they are called into action for a wide variety of tasks—tasks a jet or commercial plane could never handle.
Most critically, helicopters are used for medical evacuations, also known as medevacs. Medical evacuations are necessary when a patient is in a life-threatening circumstance and in need of expediting while receiving ongoing medical attention. This can happen just about anywhere in the world: on a skiing trip in the French Alps, while hiking in Utah, and from the ledge of a crane in Australia. They can even happen right from your own home. In areas where flooding occurs—in great swaths of the U.S., for instance—medevacs must deploy frequently to rescue folks from their homes, car accidents...or trees. A medevac helicopter might even be flying overhead as you read this.
Sure, it’s great that planes can take you to your Caribbean holiday resort. But life doesn’t always go as planned. And when it doesn’t, and something catastrophic happens, isn’t it a little more purposeful (and comforting) that a helicopter can transport you quicker than an ambulance and carefully deliver you to a hospital without the need of a runway?
What often goes unmentioned is that operating a helicopter on a life-saving mission requires an incredible level of focus, skill, and situational awareness. Despite the erratic control movements often seen in cinema, pilots must be extremely deft of hand, steady and certain at all times. They also must be able to fly a helicopter smoothly, yet swiftly with flight nurses working on a patient in the back. Flying around congested areas or dangerous terrain while changing radio frequencies, updating various avionics, simultaneously talking with ATC, and perpetually monitoring gauges with a critically injured patient in the back of your copter—could there possibly be a more voluntarily stressful circumstance?
Looking outside of civilian life, helicopters have also been an indispensable asset in military efforts. Choppers forever changed the dynamics during times of conflict. Helicopters were first used extensively in the Korean War, where they rescued wounded warriors, helping to reduce causalities to a number lower than in any previous war. Vertical Envelopment became part of helicopters’ jobs, too: choppers would carry soldiers behind enemy lines, bringing pilots closer to the action than ever before. Helicopters also were responsible for supplying troops on mountainous terrain with water and other provisions. Their value during pivotal times in history cannot be overestimated.
Between the time of the Korean War and the US’ involvement in Vietnam, far larger helicopters were developed, some of which could carry up to 45 soldiers. This meant that in Vietnam, an intimidating amount of troops could be transported in one go, rather than in small groups. This radically altered how combat was approached; now, attacks could come quickly, more effectively, and on short notice.
Soon, gunships like the AH-1 Cobra were developed. These could be equipped with a number of different weapons; by extension, helicopters were no longer limited to being mere people haulers. They were now a formidable force from above. Proving their versatility and invaluable worth, helicopters remain deployed during conflicts to this day.
Helicopters have been employed mainly to complete highly important, often-life-saving missions. Their work has yet fallen into the domain of public usage at large. We don’t leap in a chopper to run errands or to get to the train station more quickly...until now.
As humans continually desire convenient means of travel, helicopters have increasingly entered the commercial travel space. Already their evolution as a common source of transportation has begun. Apps like Blade allow the user to summon a helicopter practically anywhere in the world. Blade’s main goal is to mitigate some of the travel woes experienced on heavily-frequented travel routes, like, for instance, between Downtown Los Angeles and LAX. Rather than sit in gridlocked traffic, why not soar above the commoners in your very own private escape vehicle?
Similarly, Uber just unveiled its brand-new service, Uber Copter. Copter operates between Downtown New York and JFK airport, allowing passengers to avoid the traffic-prone and all-around miserable route via car or subway. Uber Copter promises a ride that takes only eight minutes from-lift off to landing. While this does seem like an excellent use of helicopter power, there are still some kinks the company needs to iron out. One pretty serious kink being that the entire trip isn’t necessarily that big a time-saver.
It’s unclear as of yet if these types of commercial services will gain traction or if they will blow away like so much rotated air. Flying in urban centers has its own hazards, including increased risk of accidents and the limited availability of helipads. As marvelous as they are, you can’t take off in a helicopter from the middle of Times Square without blowing away a myriad of food concessions, trinkets, and knockoffs.
But no matter how the general public takes to short-distance air travel, the helicopter will remain a critical fixture in the fields of sight-seeing, electronic news-gathering, search and rescue, fighting wildfires, powerline patrol, executive transport, aerial surveys, medical rescues, and military activity. So, we’d like to thank you, helicopters, for the service, for saving lives, for getting to hard-to-reach places, and for picking up and depositing our homes in new places. Yep, copters can do that, too.
If you’re looking for helicopter-grade clothing, adventure gear, home goods, and more, swing by Aviator Mercantile Post. Durable, reliable, and always there when you need it: the helicopter’s mantra, and ours.
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