New York Airways Helicopter Service to Manhattan Promotional Film 34204 (1962)

Synopsis

This is a rare promotional film for New York Airways, "THE SKYLINE ROUTE" that dates to 1962 and features the Boeing Vertol 107 helicopter. At this time NYA offered service to LaGuardia and Idlewild Airport. The film includes rare footage of flight operations as well as images of 1960s New York with its traffic jams, which was the primary selling feature for the Skyline Route service. At 10:09, a future service from the Pan Am building's roof heliport is discussed -- a feature that would eventually prove the airline's undoing when there was a major accident atop the skyscraper (read below). NYA was a helicopter airline in the New York City area. It was founded in 1949 as a mail and cargo carrier. On July 9, 1953 it became the first scheduled helicopter airline to carry passengers in the United States. Its headquarters were at LaGuardia Airport. In February 1955 the one way fare from LaGuardia to Idlewild was $4.50. The ship was a Sikorsky H-19, N418A. The trip took ten minutes and their phone number was DEfender 5-6600. The first scheduled passenger flights to Manhattan arrived in December 1956 at the new heliport west of the West Side Highway at 30th St. The downtown heliport on East River Pier 6 opened in 1960 and New York Airways moved all its Manhattan passenger flights down there around December 1960. Due to route restrictions on the single-engine Vertol 44, nonstop flights from Manhattan to Idlewild didn't begin until the twin-engine 107 arrived. Scheduled flights to…

Uploader's description on archive.org

Details

Running time

16 minutes

Language

English

Collection

Ephemeral Films

Subjects on the Internet Archive

• Stock Footage

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