"Airliner" helicopters

famvburg · 19 May 2012

Not what-ifs, but what helos were used, mainly in the USA by airlines or commuters? I'm sure of the Sikorsky S-61N, the civil version of the CH-46 & I'm guessing the civilian version of the Piasecki H-21. I think I've seen a proposal for the civilian CH-47. I don't think any are in use today but what were the airlines' intentions with them anyway? Short haul, from a major 'downtown terminal' to the 'main airport'? I've never really seen a lot of info, just a few pics. i guess this would've been from the '60s probably.

Bill Walker · 19 May 2012

Vertol 107 (a.k.a. CH-46) was used in New York City, from memory. Many scheduled short services have been run with a range of smaller helicopters. AS355 used briefly from Pearson Airport to downtown Toronto in 1990s, S76 used between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria, probably many others. I am not aware of H-21 or CH-47 derivatives in scheduled service in North America, although some were used in charter services.

The common connection in all scheduled helicopter services I recall was starting or stopping in an urban centre. Many were based on service to or from a big airport, but not all.

Machdiamond · 20 May 2012

Not in the USA, but from 1956 Sabena had a fleet of eight S.58 based in downtown Brussels and serving destinations such as Paris, Rotterdam and Bonn.

jstar · 20 May 2012

Piasecki Model 44 , and a Boeing Vertol BV 107, of New York Airways

'Airpower' and 'Wings', March and April of 2004, a two part series on Passenger/Commuter helicopters.

In the US, between the commuter services offered in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, there were S-55s, S-58s, S-61s, Vertol 44Bs, and Boeing Vertol 107s.

Most were in service to provide rapid transit from city centers to nearby airports, or from airport to airport as in San Francisco to Oakland, or O'Hare to Midway.

One of the captions on a picture in one of the articles mentions a five minute flight from New York's Wall Street Heliport to Newark's Airport, for $6.00 (in 1962), vs an hour sitting in rush hour traffic for the same trip.

LowObservable · 20 May 2012

Sabena S-55 in action!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAf7nioNR5U

Either I or my brother got one of these for Christmas. I think I was too young to make it fly, which involved turning a handcrank linked to a flexible drive cable and called for more muscle power than a 4-year-old LO could generate.

Another major commercial helicopter program was the Boeing 234LR Chinook, which was CAA and FAA certificated and entered passenger service supporting North Sea oil rigs in the 1980s. However, I think surviving 234s are all in utility/cargo operations now. Boeing sold the TC to Columbia Helicopters in 2006.

The Artist · 20 May 2012

Vertol 107s also flew in Pan Am markings in New York - though, I think they were New York Air machines operating under contract.

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The civilian Sikorsky S-55 variant was designated S-55A.

It was used by New York Airways, National, Los Angeles Airways, Sabena and probably several others.

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The Vertol 107, as has been said, was used primarily by New York Airways (please note different window shapes/arrangement in picture #5):

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The Model 234 Chinook (please compare the Columbia example with the much smaller Columbia Vertol 107 in the previous post):

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The Vertol 44:

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The Sikorsky S-58C and S-58T (turbine-powered):

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

The Sikorsky S-61L, S-61N (amphibian) and S-61T (turbine-powered):

archipeppe · 21 May 2012

Here it is an Italian S-61N utilized for passengers transportation over the Gulf of Naples (Napoli - Capri - Ischia) at the end of '60s.

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

A similar role is more or less filled in by today's Sikorsky S-92:

LowObservable · 21 May 2012

This was surely the ultimate city-center helicopter operation. Operated from 1965-68 with 107s, it resumed in 1977 with S-61Ns but stopped after a few months due to a fatal accident, when a helo's landing gear failed, it tipped over and a main rotor blade separated, killing four people on the deck and one on the street below.

One of the victims on the deck was film director Michael Findlay, who specialized in brutal horror movies. His last work listed in Wikipedia was the "1974 Yeti slasher movie" Shriek of the Mutilated. File under "karma"?

Stargazer · 21 May 2012

LowObservable said:
Operated from 1965-68 with 107s, it resumed in 1977 with S-61Ns but stopped after a few months due to a fatal accident

Some foolish politicians surrendered to the alarmists to get reelected...
What if cars had been forbidden in the city center after the first car accident? Fortunately the politicians at the time had the guts to not shy away from the march of progress...

LowObservable · 21 May 2012

Fuel prices also played a part, together with the fact that economics were marginal. Operations were suspended, not formally banned, but the authorities were rightly concerned about the risk to third parties. Although a Rotodyne landing on the Pan Am building would have been a sight to behold!

Bill Walker · 21 May 2012

To follow up on what LowObservable said, most scheduled airline type helicopter services failed for economic reasons. What has done very well economicaly are "on demand" service, i.e. non-scheduled departures, but often over standard routes. These include basically every production civil helicopter type of the last 50 years. Most old field support work really falls into this category, not "airline". The off shore oil field work may be scheduled, but the paying passengers were all identified back when a multi-year contract was signed.

HeavyG · 21 May 2012

The S-61N and Boeing 107 are still hard at work today. I got to fly on both during my stint as a contractor in Afghanistan. The S-61Ns are flown by Presidential and the 107s by Columbia.

Bill Walker · 21 May 2012

At least some of the S-61s and BV 107s in civil use in Afghanistan are actually ex USN or USMC military models.

mz · 21 May 2012

Copterline flies the Helsinki-Tallinn route since 2000. First with two Sikorsky S-76:s but it stopped using them when one crashed into the Gulf of Finland in the summer of 2005 and changed over to Agusta Westland AW139.

You could travel the 80 km distance in 20 minutes, while it takes 3-4 hours with a slow boat and a few hours on a fast one. The company stopped operations in 2008 and filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Then a new company started in 2011, I think an Estonian one with the same name this time.

I think this is easily the case for best economics - since there's no fast overland alternative and there's still lots of traffic.

The helipad is at the southwestern harbor tip in Helsinki, that area's under housing development now so I wonder what's going to happen in a few years...

http://www.copterline.com

taildragger · 22 May 2012

Stargazer2006 said:
LowObservable said:

Operated from 1965-68 with 107s, it resumed in 1977 with S-61Ns but stopped after a few months due to a fatal accident

Click to expand...

Some foolish politicians surrendered to the alarmists to get reelected...
What if cars had been forbidden in the city center after the first car accident? Fortunately the politicians at the time had the guts to not shy away from the march of progress...

As cool as Manhattan rooftop helipads were, takeoffs and landings within dozens of feet (horizontally) of some of the most densely populated sidewalks in the world seems a little nuts. The air over Manhattan can be very turbulent (this is supposedly part of the reason why the Empire State Building's spire was never used as a mooring mast) and, combined with the gusts that must be present 800 ft up, I suspect that operations at the Pan Am Building helipad were more challenging than at a typical helicopter base. When something inevitably goes wrong, it's almost certain to come down on top of a lot of people. In this incident, they got off easy - the entire helicopter could have easily gone over the side rather than just a few parts. Since, oh, the 1920s, that kind of effective proximity to flight ops hasn't been allowed anywhere in the fixed wing world outside of shipboard aviation. Within the US Navy anyway, a flight deck is called the "world's most dangerous workplace".

overscan (PaulMM) · 22 May 2012

See the Westland Westminster "Inter-City Airliner" project here:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,15625.0.html

Stargazer · 22 May 2012

Also a nice Soviet might-have-been:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,6605.msg55419.html#msg55419

Antonio · 25 May 2012

Super Frelon for Greece

Stingray · 25 May 2012

pometablava said:
Super Frelon for Greece

Technically SA.321F (F-OCMF), "Hermes". Photo of it restored over here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48028479@N00/225148476/

piko1 · 30 May 2012

the old Balkan Airways had one destination entirely covered by Mi-8
Sofia - Kurjali
here is a photo of Mi-8T LZ-CAF with the old Balkan markings and one clip of LZ-CAM (Mi-8P)
http://www.airliners.net/photo/1152211/L/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxd3whv23hs

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