The history of New York Airways helicopter operations
If a person about to board a plane in Omaha is asked where they are going and replies “Omaha,” they may get a few puzzled looks and even an audible “But aren’t you there now?” However, when you live in metropolises that support multiple airports, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Tokyo, it is possible to fly from one to the other.
While the distances between them may not be that great, surface travel, especially during rush hour, can be time consuming, and there’s nothing like landing at an airport and heading to the next gate for a connecting flight. and even have your checked baggage interlined for that.
New York qualifies to have one of these inter-airport networks, and its namesake New York Airways made a valiant two-decade-long attempt to offer rotary wing service within it.
As the third to do so, he followed Los Angles Airways and Chicago Helicopter Air Services and was awarded an operating certificate by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in December 1951 to fly between the triple Idlewild Airport, La Guardia, and Catchment area. of Newark.
Reflecting the development of early aviation, in which open-cockpit biplanes carried mail via designated routes and accommodated some passengers to increase revenue when space permitted, it transitioned to passenger payload form the July 8, 1952 with seven-seat Sikorsky S-55. , eventually expanding beyond its inter-airport network to New Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton in New Jersey. Service penetrating Manhattan to the Hudson River that hugs the West 30th Street Heliport began four years later on December 5.
Noise and vibration were offset by comfort, speed, travel times measured in minutes, and unparalleled views of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline. Approaches to circled landing point “H” on the pier jutting out of the water put the size of the aircraft into perspective as the Manhattan monoliths all but swallowed it during its descent.
Earlier that year, on April 21, New York Airways inaugurated the more advanced and higher-capacity twin-rotor Vertol 44B.
“It was the first transport helicopter to have its cabin arranged like that of a conventional commercial airliner, seating 15 passengers, mainly two abreast on the starboard side of the cabin with the aisle and luggage space to the left. “, according to REG Davies in “America’s Airlines Since 1914” (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998, p. 475).
However, passenger acceptance and expansion quickly required even larger and more advanced equipment, prompting New York Airways’ initial order for $4,350,000 for ten Vertol V-107-IIs on January 15, 1960. halved to five.
The type that eventually became its virtual badge and symbol, not only has its origins in a design, but also in the very manufacturer that created it. Vertol, a Philadelphia-based rotary wing company, was simultaneously designing two tandem rotor helicopters, namely the Chinook for the US Army and the CH-46A Sea Knight for the US Navy and Marines. The USA.
The latter, the result of a design competition for a Marine Corps medium assault transport, first flew in August 1962 and was first delivered two years later, transporting troops and cargo between ships stationed in the Sea of South China and Vietnam. Of its three prototypes, one was modified to the civilian standard V-107-II and first flew on October 25, 1960, at a time when Boeing had acquired the company, resulting in the Boeing-Vertol name.
Powered by a 1,250 shp General Electric T58-8 turboshaft engine, it featured a 50-foot rotor diameter. With an overall length of 84 feet, it had a gross weight of 18,400 pounds.
It first flew in full production mode the following year on May 19, was certified by the FAA in January 1962, and entered New York Airway scheduled service on July 1. The remaining ten built were sold to Kawasaki of Japan to serve as license. produced model aircraft, but that plan never proceeded to production.
The images of the V-107-II taking off from Pan Am’s rooftop heliport symbolized the island of Manhattan that spanned the skyscrapers and formed an integral part of the city’s culture. They also represented an aspect of urban mobility: subways under its streets and helicopters over its buildings represented successful technological triumphs over traffic-saturated streets and significantly reduced travel times.
“Twenty-five passengers traveled in this twin-turbine design at a cruising speed of 140 mph,” according to Len Morgan in “Airliners of the World” (Arco Publishing Company, 1966, p. 90). “New York Airways got him from Kennedy International to the bottom of Wall Street in 16 minutes or to the top of the Pan Am building in seven. Either trip required a hectic hour and a quarter drive during rush hour.”
New York Airways was able to operate in half-hour intervals, and its yearly passenger totals reflected the popularity of its offerings: 8,758 in its first year of operation and more than 250,000 in its tenth.
While rotary wing operations offered numerous advantages, including multiple daily frequencies; cabins with low capacity and easy to fill; fast aerial jumps; unparalleled views; and the ability to land on any postage stamp-sized patch, whether paved or not, also had their drawbacks. They had high operating costs, produced significant noise, featured engine and mechanical complexity, operated in densely populated urban areas where safety was a primary concern, required subsidies for profitability, and, at least initially, were dependent on climate and weather conditions. visuals.
The phasing out of subsidies necessitated discontinuation of service, including those at the West 30th Street and Bridgeport, Connecticut heliport. On April 11, 1965, they were phased out entirely, affecting not only New York Airways, but also other comparable rotary-wing companies in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Pan American World Airways launched a financial lifeline, purchasing two additional V-107-IIs for $850,000 each, then leasing them from New York Airways to operate at the 1964 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows.
Sikorsky, through its parent Untied Aircraft Corporation, did the same with three S-61s. Powered by the same General Electric T58-8 engine, but with a different configuration, a shorter fuselage, and a larger 62-foot rotor diameter, it was the competitor to the V-107-II, but was otherwise similar with a 25-passenger capacity and a gross weight of 18,700 lbs. It was inaugurated into service on December 21, 1965.
Bypassing all surface traffic and reducing travel time to just seven minutes, the Boeing-Vertol V-107-II and Sikorsky S-61 service between Pan Am’s rooftop heliport and JFK allowed passengers to check in for their fixed-wing flights at the Pan Am Building 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Seventeen daily round trips offered maximum comfort. Fares were $7.00 one way and $10.00 round trip.
Because the service complied with the CAB’s “public convenience and necessity” clause, both Pan Am and TWA were able to make equity investments in New York Airways, the former to the tune of 24.4 percent and the latter to 15 percent. .6 percent.
Sikorsky S-61s sported the TWA emblem on the sides of the aft fuselage.
In addition to the airline’s financial fatalities, there were also human fatalities, casting dark clouds of doubt about rotary-wing technology for scheduled commercial operations.
On May 18, 1977, for example, a New York Airways S-61L sank during a collision on top of the Pan Am heliport, killing five people in the process, including one person who he was walking down Madison Avenue below where the unbound rotor blade struck him.
Two years later, in April 1979, three were killed when a rotor blade detached from another S-61 at Newark International Airport.
Fatigue and metal failure had caused the right landing gear to collapse in the first incident and the tail rotor to break in the second.
Forced to cease operations, New York Airways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; and although various strategies were devised to resuscitate him, none proved fruitful.
New York Airways’ 18-year inter-airport and neighboring rotary-wing operations of four types, scheduled for mail and passengers, were convenient and popular, defining a new market and purpose for the design. But the ones that existed then were noisy, complex, fuel-thirsty, and ultimately flawed, and not necessarily of sufficient advance for safe, cost-effective, high-frequency daily operations, leaving later carriers like New York Helicopter to fill the gap. in the New York airport area and many others around the world. While the technology had improved intermittently and was one measure of the type’s success, its operating costs and profitability were the others.
“After twelve years of passenger operations, therefore, helicopter carriers (including New York Airways, Chicago Helicopter Airways, Los Angeles Airways, and San Francisco and Oakland Airlines) had a good opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of powered aircraft. by rotor, but they had not been able to present their case”, concludes Davies (op. cit. p. 479).
Article Sources:
Davies, REG “United States Airlines Since 1914.” Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.
Morgan, Leon. “Airliners of the World”. New York: Arc Publishing Company, Inc., 1966.