I cannot stress this enough.
As usual, I’ll use a story to illustrate my point. I’ll try to keep it brief.
The Flight
Today, Flying M Air did a 2-hour charter for two men from Texas. They’d come to Phoenix to do a rather unusual aerial survey. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to go into details of what it was all about, but I can say that it required me to fly low and slow over a bunch of commercial properties all over the Phoenix area.
The flight was booked last minute in an odd way. I got a call from a local airplane charter company who told me that these two guys had shown up to charter a helicopter — which the airplane charter company did not have. Could I take these guys on a survey flight? I spoke to one of the clients, got a few quick questions answered — including their weights, which I needed to calculate a weight and balance for the flight — and told them my rates. Then I hung up and got ready to meet them at the airport in less than two hours.
I was just leaving when my phone rang. It was XYZ Company (not their real name), which I wrote about at some length here. The short version is that XYZ is a booking company that markets itself as a provider of aviation (and other) services but doesn’t own a single aircraft. Instead, it hires third party companies (like mine) to provide the services,
The XYZ person on the phone told me they were sending two clients to me. She then proceeded to describe the job I’d booked directly with the client.
I told her I’d already booked it with the client and that the client was going to pay me with a credit card at the conclusion of the flight. I was trying hard to keep XYZ out of it. It didn’t matter much to me — I’d get paid the same amount whether they were involved or not — but I simply don’t like the way XYZ does business. But the caller told me that the client already had credit with XYZ and that XYZ was willing to pay me for the 2 hours of flight time up front with a credit card.
I didn’t want the client to pay me and still be on the hook with XYZ, so I took the payment. I then called the client and told him what had transpired. He seemed happy enough.
I went to the airport and did the flight. It was far from an ideal setup. For some reason, the client expected me to know the addresses of the buildings we flew over. As if flying a helicopter 300 feet off the ground while watching for obstructions and other traffic and talking to an airport control tower wasn’t enough of a workload for me. They were completely unprepared to get the location information they needed — hell, a handheld GPS, which I could have provided with enough notice, would have been a real handy tool.
But the client seemed satisfied with the flight. It was a nice day to fly and I was paid up front. So how could I complain?
The Lesson to Be Learned
I do, however, want to use this story as a lesson to folks shopping around for services — perhaps for holiday gift-giving.
There are several points to be made about what transpired. Although these points deal specifically with XYZ, they also apply to similar organizations that act as booking agents for services:
- XYZ Company makes money off every flight it books. It typically marks up my services by 30%. So yes, if you bought an hour of flight time from me, it would cost you $545. But if you bought the same hour of flight time with XYZ in the middle, it would cost you about $700. In today’s story, these guys spent $300 more than they could have for the same service.
- XYZ Company does not give refunds. For any reason. If you need to cancel a flight, you get a credit for the amount you paid. You have one year to use it elsewhere. Since I don’t (usually) take payment in advance, when you book with me, you don’t need to worry about refunds or credits. So if XYZ had been unable to book the flight with me, these clients would probably be stuck with a credit.
- XYZ Company charges a fixed price for the service you say you need. So if you want 2 hours of flight time, you’ll pay for it up front. If you fly only 1-1/2 hours, you’re out of luck since they don’t give refunds. But because I charge charter clients based on actual time flown, if they fly less than expected, they pay less than expected. In fact, I typically overestimate flight time so folks feel good when the final cost is less than they thought it would be.
- XYZ Company can’t be relied upon to get a reservation handled correctly. This is a classic example: they booked an airplane when the client clearly needed a helicopter! These guys flew in from Texas for this survey — imagine if there weren’t any helicopter charter operators available to do the flight on such short notice. They would have made the trip for nothing. Another time, they booked a 5-hour survey flight for a client that required landing illegally in a wilderness area (which I was not going to do). And I can’t tell you how many phone calls it takes to arrange a flight for a client with XYZ in the middle. Right now, I’m waiting for a yes/no answer on a flight they’ve called me about four times already — and I still don’t know if it’s going to happen.
Yet time after time, people turn to companies like XYZ, relying on a middle man who knows nothing about the provider’s capabilities or operations. The chain of communication is never properly established, services are misrepresented, clients and providers get unpleasant surprises at job time.
And the buyer of the services is paying a 20% to 40% premium.
What are they getting for this extra cost? Well, they don’t have to call more than one company that appears in Google’s search results.
You see, that’s how these companies get the calls. They buy up domain names and Google AdWords. They set up generic websites for local helicopter tours or airplane tours or balloon rides or skydiving. You search and they come to the top. You look at their site and you think they’re some big adventure travel company with airplanes and helicopters and hot air balloons all over the country. You call and they assure you they can help you. So you stop looking and let them do the work.
Is that worth 30% more than you could pay?
If you think so, fine. Like I said: it doesn’t affect me. I get paid the same amount, whether you book through me or them.
But in a day and age when everyone is so hot for deep discount deals like the ones Groupon offers, it seems so very strange to me that people would be willing to give money away to a middleman just because he knows how to dial a phone.
Ready to go, I wait for Mike, who is only half dressed and still working on his laptop. I pull out my iPad and check the weather for Las Vegas. Later, when I’m waiting for my passengers at Prescott, I’ll check official weather with Duats and file a flight plan, which is required for my Part 135 operation. I waste some more time playing with 
I make a radio call on the practice area frequency as I fly over Anthem, a master-planned community north of Phoenix, and then leave the urban sprawl behind me. Ahead of me are rolling hills climbing into the high desert. I fly over the freeway toward Prescott, passing over a handful of scattered homes and dirt roads. Somewhere along the way, I realize that changing the battery in my Garmin 420 GPS has erased my custom settings; I make some display changes on the map page. I tune my main radio to the Prescott tower frequency and tune the radio on my GPS to the Prescott ATIS frequency.
I come into a hover over the numbers 30 on runway 30. I’m told to switch to a ground frequency — something that very seldom happens — and I get sloppy with my 3-foot hover while using my left hand to tune in the frequency. I call in and get progressive taxi instructions to the Legend ramp. I land in a t-spot, glad that they use chains instead of ropes to tie down the planes. I shut down and send an OK signal from SPOT to Mike.
Tower finally tells me to depart along taxiway Delta (parallel to runway 21L) and maintain taxiway heading. Then switch to the other tower frequency. That controller finally clears me to turn on course. I turn right heading 295 degrees, which will take me directly to the Hoover Dam 160 miles away. Controller asks what altitude I want and I tell him 500 AGL.
Clear of Prescott airspace, I turn into the FSS frequency and activate my flight plan. Passengers are happily chatting away about the places we’re flying over. I answer questions when asked. Terrain is high desert hills with piñon and juniper pine. Some evidence of lava flows along basalt cliffs. We climb to 6,500 feet to clear small mountain ranges. There are no paved roads, no buildings, no vehicles. Only scattered cattle ponds and the occasional handful of cows.
We cross I-40 just east of the junction of state route 93, far to the east of we cross a few more mountains, then drop into a Valley inexplicably marked on the charts as Cottonwood Cliffs. (What cliffs?) We’re still heading roughly 295 degrees. There are scattered homes beneath us now.
We near the area where the tour pilots fly between Boulder Airport and Grand Canyon West, so I tune into their frequency to monitor communications. Lots of chatter using landmarks and reporting points I don’t know. The only comforting information is their altitudes: higher than mine. The desert flattens out with scattered communities. We overfly two paved roads.
We cross over the road to Temple Bar and pick up state route 93 as it snakes into the hills. The pair of two-lane roads looks freshly paved. At the turnoff to Willow Beach, I veer off the main road to the west. We catch a glimpse of the Colorado River as we head toward the dam.
Listening to the Las Vegas ATIS, I learn that the helicopter frequency is in operation. I call the tower and request inbound heading to Stratosphere, then turn for landing at Atlantic ramp. I receive a squawk code and clearance to do as requested. Ahead of us, a thick blanket of white smog covers the Las Vegas skyline. The Stratosphere tower, rising 1,149 feet above the Strip, is barely visible in the haze.
The course stretches about 30 miles across the open desert east of Parker, zig-zagging on existing dirt roads, including more than a few power line roads. The land out there is mostly old sand dunes like those shown in this photo. (This photo was taken from about 800 feet AGL; the dots are bushes about 3-5 feet tall.) The land here is remote and mostly barren. A bold pilot could fly 50 feet AGL without fear of hitting anything. Except, of course, the power lines.
Track locations are identified by mile number. There are no visible markers, though — that would make it too easy. Instead, if you’re lucky you have a copy of the course map and have secured it to something so you can consult it in flight. Remember, at least one door is off, so the wind is whipping around the cabin and loose paper is not an option. Although you could put all the mile markers in your GPS, that would make quite a mess. So I just have about 10 points in my GPS and I can use them to home in on the point I need to get to.
One of the videographers (A) claimed he weighed 260 lbs. I added 10 pounds, as I usually do, for clothes and equipment. I then calculated my weight and balance several ways, hoping he’d choose a back seat location with his 190-lb still photography companion beside him. Earth to video professionals: If you want to do aerial photography from a helicopter, slim down. If you want OGE hovers and aggressive maneuvers, your pilot will need all the performance he can get.
Only one of the videographers (B) had ever worn a harness before. I’d brought mine along and he was very happy to have it. He climbed right in and hooked up. I had to assist the other two with the harness. Tragically, C did not fasten the seatbelt behind him before sitting down and the buckle slipped out of the open door during flight. Dangling there in the slipstream, it did serious damage to the paint on the left side of the helicopter. I can’t imagine how he didn’t see or hear the metal buckle banging, but, as I said earlier, he wasn’t entirely there.
Chase mode. In chase mode, you pair up with the vehicle, putting the photographer(s) in position to shoot. That often means dropping down to 50-100 feet over the desert floor. It almost always means matching the speed of the vehicle you’re chasing. On straight, smooth stretches of road — like one of the power line roads — the vehicle could be going over 100 miles per hour. On roads cutting through lava beds or through canyons or zig-zagging around high tension power line towers, the vehicle could be moving at just 30 miles per hour. The pilot’s job is to keep on the target, always watching out for obstacles and other aircraft, listening to the instructions of the photographer: higher, lower, faster, slower, right, left. It’s tricky when you don’t have brakes or 0-to-60-in-5-seconds acceleration capabilities. I prefer having the photographer sit behind me so I can see the action as well as he can, but that’s not always possible. With two photographers on the left side of the aircraft, I usually can’t see the vehicle — although I can often hear the sound of its engine and passing horn — through my noise canceling headsets and over the sound of the helicopter! — if I’m properly lined up with it. When the photographer has enough footage shot alongside the vehicle, he sometimes asks me to position myself for what I call photo mode.