Safety Of Helicopter Tour

[Jade08]

Hi there,

 

Our Volendam Alaska cruise will stop at Juneau on May 30. We booked Helicopter Flightseeing & Glacier Trek tour through Holland America. But just in recent two days, there were two separate helicopter crash incidents from news. This made me really nervous. How safe is the helicopter tour in Alaska, particularly the tour provider (I heard it will be North Star Helicopters)? Is there any way we can check its safety records?

 

I’ve always dreamed to take a walk on glacial. But the safety concern may prevent me to fulfill my dream.

 

Any input will be appreciated.

[peety3]

The crash today in Seattle was an unfortunate artifact of operating a helicopter in a city environment from a ~40' "rooftop" helipad: without either 300' of altitude or 30 knots forward speed, there's not enough time to perform the maneuver necessary for an engine failure. Obviously, we have no idea what happened yet, but if it was an engine failure (which seems likely) as they were taking off, it's impossible to land back on the pad, impossible to perform an autorotation, and the landing sites are littered with trees and lamp posts that interfere with the landing.

 

In Alaska, the helicopter operators are going to have essentially wide open spaces, so there's a means for the pilots to accelerate to 30 knots and then climb, remaining near the ground until they get to that critical airspeed. You're also in a "boring" (aka "simple" environment): the pilots fly the same route day after day, often following a leader, and landing on broad, "flat" glaciers, etc. In cruise, they're free to choose whatever altitude they wish, which means they can buy themselves "time" to recover if something were to happen.

 

Contrast that with news helicopters, which often operate over random routes (go here today for story X, go there tomorrow for story Y), may compete with another station to get to the scene first, and may have to hover over/near police helicopters, etc., all while coordinating their scene selection with ATC.

 

I did a helicopter excursion on my first Alaska cruise, and would do it again in a heartbeat. I chose not to do a helicopter excursion on my second Alaska cruise, and haven't chosen to do one on my next Alaska cruise, for wholly different reasons: the price/value (cost per hour of excursion is higher than almost any other non-flying excursion, and you can practically calculate the cost per minute as an across-the-board value for any heli trip), the lack of space (and the resulting impact on what photographic gear I can carry), and the lack of wildlife photo opportunities compared to other less-expensive excursions.

[Jade08]

Hi peety3,

 

Thank you very much.

 

I may switch to Whales & Mendenhall Glacier Photo Safari tour.

[rjeffler]

Remember, we drive in cars EVERY day and there are accidents, but we keep driving. Much better chance of being in a car accident than a helicopter accident!

[Jade08]

Thanks, rjeffler.

 

Checked again, maybe the helicopter tour operator will be NorthStar Trekking.

 

On TripAdvisor, they got pretty good reviews.

 

Those members posted pictures are so appealing.

 

We still have two months to think about.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Jade08