Luxury NYC hotels offer free helicopter rides to JFK airport

New York City's congestion problem is leading to a life of luxury for some people. Six hotels in the city are providing free helicopter travel from JFK and Newark. The flights are operated under the urban air mobility company Blade, and customers must stay at the hotel for a two-night minimum here. Now, these are not any cheap hotels on this list, we should note. But, of course, this is a premium that perhaps you're willing to pay a little bit for if you just want to make sure that you can get to your suite, kick off your shoes, and, you know, get one of those plush bathrobes. Why not? Yeah, we've got a breakdown of these prices here on your screen. So, definitely not getting a helicopter ride for free at the Ritz-Carlton. The average price for their Liberty Suite that you'd have to stay in to get access to this helicopter transportation is hitting around $3,395. For the St. Regis, that's just above $3,000. And at New York's Addition Hotel, that's going to be around $2,500 for the Flatiron Suite. So, really getting a deal there at the Addition for only $2,500. I also know that for some of these hotels, there is a catch in terms of the number of nights that you have to stay to have access to this. And we should mention this would be operated by Blade Helicopter. This is an urban air mobility company that did go public a couple years back. And it's interesting to see that this stock is actually down off of this new, so not seeing some upward movement on the stock off of this, potentially because, I mean, it's interesting to figure out the financials behind this. I would be curious to see how much the hotels are paying Blade for this service, and also how the financing works. If I was someone who was already paying for these suites, and the cost of the suite didn't go up, I'd be like, well, then what was I paying for in the first place? Yeah. Well, I mean, for Blade, it's a very expensive business to operate. And a company that originally, I believe, had been trying to, or at least put together a pitch to go public, had some timing, I think, about 2018. And then eventually went public via SPAC. And so that's why perhaps you're seeing it kind of sputter, at least in its life as a publicly traded company right now, just above $3 a share. And most of the SPACs, the kind of earmark figure that you see many of them going out the door at is about $10. So at the end of the day here, it's been a tough ride of it. Choppy, if you will, or turbulent for Blade. You know, just the air travel puns. They run abound. No, you're right, Brad. Yeah, they went public in 2019. A little bit of a free money environment and via SPAC, which we know led to a wide variety of companies going public that maybe wouldn't have in our current interest rate environment. But nonetheless, you and I can look forward to never having access to this type of hotel room. No, we're not saying never. We are speaking these things as though they were. Well, he's going to be fine. He's got it. Well, I hope so one day.