Sunset Helicopter Flight in a Robinson R66

I'm Alex. I'm Farley. This is Galveston Helicopter Adventures and this is our Robinson R66. The Robinson R66 is a helicopter designed and built by Robinson Helicopter Company. It has five seats, a separate cargo compartment, and is powered by a Rolls-Royce RR300 turboshaft engine. The R66 is a larger and turbine-powered derivative of the Robinson R22 and R44 family of helicopters. Tag along with Alex and Farley as they tell us about their tour operation here in Galveston, Texas. Well, our operation, we're called Galveston Helicopter Adventures. We're here on the beautiful beach here, Stewart Beach in Galveston, Texas, and we fly helicopters. We give people tours and we do a few specialty flights on the side as well. This operation has been here for over 20 years but owned by this company for I think the past five to seven years and kind of slowly becoming a bigger factor here in Galveston. So we've actually technically got two helipads. We've got this main one here at Stewart Beach and then we also have one across the Houston Channel on Bolivar Peninsula and that's one we generally run in the summertime. And then this company also has other locations in Destin, Florida and in Orlando, Florida. So we have really short tours and then we have some longer specialty tours. For example, our shortest tour is just a little under five minutes and just goes up and down the beach all the way to some of our longer tours that are at sunset and close to 20 minutes. And then we also, like I said earlier, have a few specialty flights where we'll do something special like a gender reveal or a proposal flights and all that type of stuff. So costs are going to vary a lot. They'll start at $50 and go all the way up to $175 or more for all that specialty stuff. The helicopter that we fly today is the R66. The reason I say today is it does change depending on the day and the time of year. So generally during the off-season days, like in the wintertime or weekdays, we'll be flying the R44 which is a slightly smaller version of this aircraft and has a piston engine. While on the days or busier months, we'll be focusing more on flying the R66. A little bit larger, a little bit more powerful and has that turbine engine in it. Meanwhile, the 44 is a little bit more affordable to run when we're more quiet and maybe only have two passengers at a time. Fuel burn for both aircraft is going to be about 24 gallons per hour. These things really like fuel. Yeah. So upkeep for helicopters in general is going to be pretty intensive. We have so many spinny bits and vibrational bits in the helicopters that we really need to be sharp on it and make sure everything's kept up well. Luckily, we've got a really good maintenance team at this company. We'll have a traveling mechanic who comes down to us and then we also have a lead mechanic who's based in Destin and available for phone calls about all those pilot-y things like, oh, this thing wiggles a little bit. Is that a problem? Yeah. Y'all are kind of probably familiar with that. But maintenance wise, it's going to be split up with Robinsons on an hourly basis. So we've got a 50-hour kind of oil change and general inspection, a 100-hour that's going to change on exactly what's going on inside that depending on how many overall hours the aircraft has, and then going up by even thousands from there for general checks and replacement of parts. So the ceiling on the R66 is going to be 9,000 feet. Theoretically, you could fly higher than that. That's an MSL number. Theoretically, you could fly higher than that, but it's that way because if you happen to have a fire on board while you were flying at 9,000 feet MSL, if you entered an autorotation, it would take you quite a long time to get down to the ground. And if you were flying any higher, it could be too long. So that's why they have us capped at that. That being said, as a helicopter pilot, I have personally never flown higher than 7,000 feet, and that gave me the heebie-jeebies. We're generally flying at 500. So max VNE in this aircraft is going to be 140 knots. Generally, I'm not so lucky to get to that speed. I have reached that a few times when I was all alone with a tailwind or something like that. But most of the time, we're averaging probably 120 knots in this aircraft on our tours. And then in the 44, we're probably going to be flying somewhere around 100, 110 knots, depending on the 44's individual personality. Some of them are faster than others. Our customer base is honestly a really huge mix of people. We'll get everything from little babies all the way up to people who are 80 or 90 years old, and it's on their bucket list. Lots of families, lots of people from totally different cultural backgrounds. We've got locals, we've got tourists. I mean, it's actually kind of awesome thing about helicopter, you never know exactly who's going to get in there with you. It's kind of nerdy, but the thing that I love the most about this job is I just really love flying. And the amount of people I get to fly with that have either never flown at all, been up in the air at all before, or even better, have never been in a helicopter. It's a lot of those people and it's awesome to share with them and be like, isn't this awesome? And they're like, yeah, and that's pretty cool. Yeah, people can come fly with us really easily. You can find us online, galvestonhelicopters.com. From there, you can also find links to our other locations in Florida and Destin and Orlando. You can give us a phone number off that website. You can also text that phone number if you're too shy to call. You can walk in, just walk up to our location here on 521 Seawall Boulevard, or you can make a reservation ahead of time on the website. Give us a call, give us a text, we'll make it happen. Okay, so yeah, I'll just take off, I'll loop us around that way and I'll go through the harbor. Awesome. On a busy afternoon or whatever, how many landings or takeoffs are you doing an hour? Oh gosh, an hour? Probably 20 to 30 an hour if they're the quick beach ones. Wow. Like I know yesterday, they were running two helicopters. Gosh, and they were non-stop, two helicopters all day. This helicopter didn't even shut down once yesterday. Wow. So I would have to go back and look at Fair Harbor, the app, and look at all of the... I tell you, this never gets old though. Honestly, that feeling of just like... So your average flight's only like five minutes, right? Yeah, so we sell them by miles, fly them by minutes. Everybody always wants to know how long they're going to be in the helicopter. So five mile... Sorry, seven mile, 14 mile, 24 mile. Essentially it's five, 10, 15 minutes, the time of the flights. So are these helicopters, does it make a difference maintenance-wise on cycles or is it mostly just by the hour? Yes, cycles. So yeah, the turbine is cycles and then that's why we use that jump pack, that start pack to save the starter in the helicopter. Okay, but it's the cycles on starting and stopping the motor, not landing. Correct. Okay. Yes, yeah, correct. Yep, and that's any turbine in a helicopter. The EC-130 that I flew at Maverick Helicopters in the Grand Canyon, same thing, cycles. Man, that's got to be the dream in the Grand Canyon like that. So I flew, I lived there, flew there for two years. The EC-130, much larger, just beautiful, beautiful aircraft. Three passengers up front and then four in the back. And that was a, it was a 55 minute tour. I would take you through the Grand Canyon, narrate, tell you everything, meet you, greet you, just a very high level VIP service. Yep. Always thought it'd be cool to do a biplane, biplane Grand Canyon tour, get down in between those canyons and stuff, golly. That's cool. Galveston area traffic, helicopter 7078 X-ray maneuvering over the channel 500 and below, Galveston traffic. That's gorgeous. That's beautiful. Do you sell out most sunset tours? Yes and no. Weekends usually always sell out for the sunset tour. During the week, it'll be a hit or miss. Honestly, during the week, if we get them, it's more of like a dinner date, a couple's dinner date thing. That's a cool date. Take the girlfriend up for a, you know, for a sunset cruise. Sunset cruise, yeah. When we had Kansas City operating, Kansas City was awesome. So that was, we mainly operated in the fall time and we did all of the, well, I did all of the, all the sunset tours, everything, all the flying was at night. We didn't do any tours during the day and it was all the Christmas light tours around downtown Kansas City. That's cool. And then that was nice. Everybody came in like suit and tie and dresses and yeah, that was a lot different operation than here. This is such a different view of the ship channel than I'm used to because I'm in a bow and I'm flying over you guys all the time. Well that, and you know, you don't have the glass bubble view. You're, I mean, you're restricted from. Oh, I can't even see in front of myself. Yeah, there's no way. This is a treat for sure. Galveston area traffic, helicopter 7078 X-ray, five miles northeast of the airfield, westbound over the harbor, 500 feet. We'll be entering an extended left base for parallel taxiway 18, Galveston. Yeah, I'm not used to flying this low over, I mean, you know, it's a thousand feet over fixed length. It's 500 feet for helicopters? 500 feet typically. And then undo hazard to persons or property on the ground. So you obviously taking off and landing, we're much lower. If it's going to be in a populated area, like, you know, that all has to get FAA approval. For them to put a helipad in there? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So your pad there on the beach has been approved? Yeah. Like Farley the other day, he had a flight up in Pearland where he was dropping flowers for some ceremonial statue unveiling. And this group wanted him to land on their property, but it was a highly densely populated area. So the FAA is like, you gotta give us five days to approve it. So unfortunately you can't land there because it is so populated. Right. And what's your typical pattern look like? I mean, do you fly like an airplane pattern? Or do you guys just do like the parallel? Oh, I mean, if I need to, I'll enter the pattern. If it's really busy or if tower wants me to enter a pattern, I just fly direct to either the taxiway or direct to the north ramp. Galveston area traffic, helicopter 7078 X-ray, one mile left base, parallel taxiway 18. We'll steer clear of active route 18 at all times. I have the aircraft base final in sight. No factor. 78 X-ray. Galveston area traffic, helicopter 7078 X-ray landing parallel taxiway 18. Have the aircraft on final for 18. Really remain clear of the active and taxiway at all times. 78 X-ray. Yeah. Pretty easy. Just come right in. Yeah. I mean, if we don't have to get in the way of any fixed wing, we don't. Yeah. Okay. That's it. I'm getting my license. This is awesome. It is pretty cool. Departing to the north away. Man. I mean, yeah, this is cool. This is all the fun without all the waiting and the taxiing. Yeah. It's a lot more expensive to get a helicopter license, right? It is. Yeah. You know, and typically for a flight training, an R44 is going to be around $500 an hour. Wow. Yeah. And you still need 40 hours or what for just private? Yeah. And in commercial, I mean, yeah, gosh, you have a lot of time. I mean, I used the post 9-11 GI bill. I did 10 years in the Marines. Yeah. I was going to ask if you did military first. Yeah. So I used the post 9-11. I paid for all of my flight training through CFII. Oh, nice. So, I mean, honestly, that was probably like $285,000. Yeah. Otherwise, how do you pay for that? Yeah, exactly. All right. Nice and easy. There she is. Beautiful. Did y'all get a lot of karma today? A decent day. Yeah, it was a decent day. Yeah. Some people get a chuckle out of it. They're like, well, I'm going to tip because I don't want bad karma. Yeah. Well, thank you for taking us out. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you guys so much for letting us tag along today. And then if anybody wants to come fly with you guys, I guess just Galveston Helicopter Adventures. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks again.