"Uber for Helicopters" Is Gross, Absurd and I Want to Use It Every Day
Getting to the airport is a pain in the ass; helicopter rides are fun and fast; and ridesharing apps are booming. These are the core ideas behind Gotham Air, a helicopter service that promises to get you from helipad to airport in six minutes. Do you need it? Definitely not. Is it incredibly fun? Absolutely.Gotham Air officially launches today in New York City, with the website and mobile site open for bookings starting this afternoon. The app, an exact mirror of the mobile site, launches on Android and iOS in the coming days, though the first 2,500 people who signed up for the beta release should see an invite to download sometime today. As for the service itself, the main draw (other than ohmygod helicopter) is price; a typical flight is $219 per person (far less than the cost of chartering an entire helicopter yourself, which can easily hit upwards of $1,000). Still, does anyone actually need this? No—almost certainly not. But after taking a flight for ourselves, we can definitely see why people might want it.
The "Uber for" prefix has become painfully prevalent in startup-land, but there are some key differences here. The most important being that you're not just hopping into some stranger's getup and praying for the best. You're hopping into an FAA-certified stranger's professional helicopter charter—Helicopter Flight Services' charters, to be exact. Though while the choppers and pilots have already been HFS-approved, they're being branded for Gotham Air-use, with the app and site acting as the middleman to connect fliers to the constantly on-call fleet....MORE
