(Paging Johnny L.A.)
Some time around 1965, when I was about seven years old, I joined the Y Indian Guides along with the other males in my family. For those who don’t know what the Y Indian Guides were, it was a fathers and sons club organized by the YMCA, based on building quality time around combining Native American lore, weekly meetings, and occasional outings. Once or twice a year there’d be a one or two night campout. It was actually a lot of fun, especially for us small boys.
Believe it or not, our first outing was a helicopter ride, and as young as I was, I knew enough not to expect all the outings to be that good. I’m not being bitter–I’m just saying this was a helicopter ride, and it doesn’t get any cooler than that. I had just gotten to the age where I wanted to have the experience of flight, where previously I’d have been terrified.
To the best of my recollection, the copter was a commercial version of an Army “flying banana”, mostly silver in color and presumably with some sort of airline livery. Probably it was Los Angeles Helicopter Airlines, whose signage and vacant former ticket counters I would see at Burbank Airport a dozen years later. Our flight took off from LAX and flew around to several local airports. As you can imagine I was absolutely transfixed, my face riveted to the window as the ground dropped away. It had just been raining, and the partly clearing sky added considerably to the view. The interior was reminiscent of a regular passenger plane, which in those days meant extremely comfortable. This was a normal, scheduled run with other passengers on board, mostly men dressed in the suit and ties that were standard male attire for air travel back then.
Today, though, there aren’t any scheduled passenger helicopters buzzing around L.A. What happened? I wouldn’t think it was just a matter of core operational costs; however expensive they had to make the tickets you would think there’d be some people willing to pay. Moreover, advances in technology would have made it possible for newer types of helicopter to run more efficiently. Did the general increase of fixed-wing traffic in the L.A. area make the airspace too risky for the helicopters? And L.A. must not have been the only city with a scheduled helicopter service. If we had it, then cities like New York must have had it too, especially since NYC has multiple major airports capable of handling large planes, unlike L.A. where we have just one giant airport and a couple of much smaller, regional ones. But you never hear anyone taking the helicopter in NYC either, these days. Even in fictional contexts, it just doesn’t happen anymore.
So what did happen?