I hope this ends better than New York Airways, which offered similar services in '60-'70 and went bankrupt after two deadly accidents.
Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
31–40 of 217 posts
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#32This is an unfortunate sign that Manhattan is turning into Sao Paulo or Hong Kong.
Nothing new about it. Way back when, Pan Am offered "free" helicopter service into the city for first class passengers. (Originally to the heliport on the roof of the Pan Am building until that was banned following an accident.)
JFK is a ways out. Newark is much less of a big deal because there's good train service between that airport and Penn Station.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#33What a wonderful and completely non-scalable solution to the question of public transportation.
What makes you think it won't scale? Seems to mesh well with all the PR about drones all over the place lately. I could easily see the helicopters being replaced with remote piloted drone taxis within a decade.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#34Footnote on ad: "Promotion rate flights are for first time flyers only and limted to a single use. Other terms and conditions may apply." HeliNY, for which they are a reseller, charges $925 for that trip as a charter. Aircraft capacity is 5 (maybe 6). So the regular price, assuming they make you wait for a full helicopter, is probably about $200.
Seems like blatant false advertising to have "$99" in big text and nothing but an asterisk to indicate that this is a rate you're allowed to have exactly once ever.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#35Why don't we start a speedboat service from SF to SFO? Also, get picked up and dropped off by a Tesla of course. The value proposition comes from the shock factor.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#36Unfortunately it requires me to get on something that is kept aloft by an extremely complex collection of moving parts that twist, wibble and vibrate. And doesn't glide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9c4I3nRIFA (Explained by the same guy who explains the differential in that old instructional video)
I'm curious, is it more or less dangerous than driving a car over the same distance?
It would seem that a helicopter is significantly more dangerous: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
That would be my intuition as well--especially for that route as traffic will frequently make driving pretty slow (and, indeed, that's sort of the point of the service).
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#37Unfortunately it requires me to get on something that is kept aloft by an extremely complex collection of moving parts that twist, wibble and vibrate. And doesn't glide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9c4I3nRIFA (Explained by the same guy who explains the differential in that old instructional video)
I'm curious, is it more or less dangerous than driving a car over the same distance?
I don't have the statistics at hand, but I'd say it's likely more. The remarkable safety of airliners doesn't extend to smaller aircraft.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#38>You never need to share the car strangers Typo here, just FYI
also, copyright year 2014 and "limted to a single use" wants an i
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#39A service like this existed until a few years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Helicopter It took just a few minutes to get to EWR or JFK and cost $159. The biggest selling point was not only the short commute, but that you went through security at the helipad very quickly, rather than waiting at the airport. I believe they were a victim of the financial crisis and died around that time.
Maybe by facilitating the service via an app will make the difference here. A much bigger audience and probably a lot easier to book.
Re: Gotham Air: Manhattan to JFK in 6 minutes for $99
#40A fleet of Teslas? Not that this isn't a cool idea, but it's still a joke, right?