There's a missing `with` at the bottom of the last paragraph of the landing page:
> You never need to share the car strangers and we can pick you up and drop you off at your front door.
Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
161–170 of 217 posts
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#162gothamair is contradicting itself. On top they are saying "Call your friends or meet some new ones on board." At the Tesla section, they are saying - "You never need to share the car strangers". Although there is a typo here (missing 'with')
Their claim is that you will share the helicopter rides, however in bad weather you will get a private car without needing to share. Because cars are cheap enough that they can afford to do that (compared to helicopters).
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did the $159 a few years ago before they shut down. My flight out of JFK was delayed by 2 hours, making the expense seem kind of ridiculous. Also, my flight was in a different terminal, meaning I had to leave and then re-enter security, which also kills the time advantage.
I don't know. I think I'd pay $160 to not sit in traffic for 3 hours, just to wait in an airport/go through security for another 2. That means extra time to get things done before you fly out.
There is subway line to JFK, why would you be in traffic?
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
EasyJet exists in Europe you know... You really have to read the fine print of their promotions.
Ryanair, too. They will fly you to $MAJOR_CITY* for just €0.50†! * Where we actually mean "a smaller airport 150km away from that city and you're on your own for getting to it" † Plus €20 ticketing fee, €20 payment-processing fee, €20 boarding-pass issuance fee, €20 checked baggage fee, €20 carry-on baggage fee, €20 fee for no baggage, €20 plane-boarding fee, €20 airport use fee, €20 fee-handling fee and other additi…
The far away airport is indeed buried in the fine print, but under current law (at least where I live) the advertised price has to be the final price; Ryanair skirt this by having one obscure credit card that they'll accept without a fee and a big fee for any other kind, but unavoidable fees on top of the advertised price are illegal.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#165> from Manhattan to JFK and Newark Liberty Airports cut the travel time from 2-hours to 6 minutes for about the same price as many black cars A helicopter flight is cool, sure... ...but "2 hours" is complete nonsense. Even if traffic is terrible, you can always take LIRR+AirTrain from Penn Station to JFK for less than $15, and it's basically guaranteed to take 35 min or less, straight to your desired terminal. Heck,…
35 minutes is a stretch. Starting at Penn Station, Google Maps has 52m as the minimum and 1h11m as the max. And that's from Penn Station. Add the time it takes to get to Penn Station from where you're going, it can easily be between 1h30m and 2h. I did this trip yesterday, and from where I started in Soho until the airport, it was 1h45m.
Sure, but are you going to be able to get to the helipad any quicker than getting to Penn?
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For 99$ this is something that doesn't even require you to be some hedge fund brat to use. Not sure what the current cab prices are these days, but i remember paying about i think 80$ for a cab from JFK to central Manhattan. You can get it a bit cheaper if you book a car service instead of grabbing a cab from the airport but it's still not sums that would break anyone's pocket. You can get to LGA via public transit…
You can also get to Heathrow with a bus or the tube for 10 GBP, still most people either take a much more expensive train or book a car. Getting to JFK in public transport might work for a domestic flight but i won't want to go trough NY's public transport with 2 full suit cases.
Tube is ~5 I think, and bus even less. But the expensive train (15GBP, still much less than $99) gets a lot of advertising and is in all the guidebooks, so many people assume it's the only way to go (plus it's owned by the airport so they try to guide you that way). I've never known anyone who'd book a car, I once took a taxi when the tube broke down and I was running late and it was GBP30 to go ~3 miles. That seems like the preserve of the super-rich.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in Europe, and every single ISP in my area advertises like this. Every single price on their website is the new-customer 3-month promo rate.
I hate when people do this, also I think it doesn't work on anyone from my generation. That was part of my reason for choosing Sonic.net. Which country do you live in ? I know nobody does ISP introductory prices in France.
For mobile phones there's a bit of regulatory backlash. iirc as of this year you can't market a phone as free anymore for example, and then combine it with a 2-year contract and advertise a 50% off 3-month rate.
So an $800 phone costing $60 a month for 2 years ($93 per month) gets advertised as 'free iPhone at just $30!'
Not sure if it works on our generation. On the one hand, obviously it does to some extent, else they wouldn't do it. I know I always made spreadsheets of monthly-average-costs (taking into account resell value of the phone) everytime I got into a 2-year contract. I know a few friends operate like that, too... In any case I think the fake advertised rate may not convince anyone in and of itself, but it does grab the attention, and that's such a key facet of marketing. For example here I'm sure plenty of people would be interested in paying $200 for the helicopter trip, but they probably wouldn't have immediately paid attention to it or had friends tell them about it or have it stuck in their minds if it wasn't priced $99.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
EasyJet exists in Europe you know... You really have to read the fine print of their promotions.
Ryanair, too. They will fly you to $MAJOR_CITY* for just €0.50†! * Where we actually mean "a smaller airport 150km away from that city and you're on your own for getting to it" † Plus €20 ticketing fee, €20 payment-processing fee, €20 boarding-pass issuance fee, €20 checked baggage fee, €20 carry-on baggage fee, €20 fee for no baggage, €20 plane-boarding fee, €20 airport use fee, €20 fee-handling fee and other additi…
And don't forget, if you close the page and come back a little later, the price will have gone up. And magically if you remove your cache and cookies and refresh, the price has dropped! Man I love airlines.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#169Shoot,it's ~$60 for an UberX according to http://uberestimate.com/cost/1/JFK/Manhattan/ .....I'd much rather get to tha choppa
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The NYC helicopters in general have a terrible track record. There are constantly articles about them crashing into the rivers, into buildings, into other helicopters or planes, etc. Someone else in the thread posted an article about how the overall helicopter fatality rate compares with the car fatality rate, and while it's hard to say for certain, it doesn't look promising.
I'd be interested in sources for these claims. Lots of hyperbole in this comment.
An anecdotal source this - but a family friend of ours is a senior pilot for a well known international airline and a former air-force pilot. He also owns and fly's a microlight in his spare time.
Recently my father took a helicopter flight and when this family friend heard about it he was absolutely livid at my father for risking his life and made my father swear to never fly a helicopter again.