Last month, during the Chime IPO week, I was in Atlanta for a team offsite. On the spur of the moment, I decided to fly back for IPO day and caught an early morning flight that arrived at JFK at 8:30 AM ET. With ~1hr before opening bell, I needed to get to Times Square as quickly as possible. A train would take at least another hour and a half and would still require another transfer. A car might have made the time, but it was rush hour and getting into the city would be difficult.

So I decided to take a BLADE helicopter from JFK to their helipad on the west side of Manhattan. For those unaware, BLADE is modern helicopter commuting:

The helicopter service is straightforward. It has a maximum of 4 passengers per flight, Uber-like booking, and a modern helicopter fleet. Trips take ~15 minutes from hangar to touchdown with a 5-minute on-flight journey that also serves as a helicopter tour of your favorite cities. They will pick you up from the airport, drive you to the helipads, and offer dedicated private cars from the well-located helipads to the city (for an additional fare).

My flight took 5 minutes. Then, another 15 minutes for the Uber into Times Square. I arrived just in time to see the company I had been with for 1/3 of my career finally list.

I wouldn’t have made it without BLADE, which felt right out of Succession. At least I thought so. But then every single person I talked to expressed some combination of fear of the flight’s danger or scorn at its unnecessary expense. Let’s break down these arguments. Onward!

This is the most common pushback, but it misses the forest AND the trees. For me, there was no other way to make the time given my flight, so the marginal ~$100 for a priceless event is obvious. Practically, to make the time any other way, I would need an earlier flight the previous day which would cost over ~$150 extra. So it was the cheapest option for me, empirically.

But I can prove it’s the best value option even on non-IPO days. Here’s the math:

The average BLADE trip takes 15 minutes door-to-door, while a cab ride from JFK to the same location takes about 2 hours.

Using an average salary of ~$200K for tech workers with 10 years of experience (likely low but fine for this purpose), the marginal minute value is ~$1.80. Saving at least ~100 minutes of travel time, the value is conservatively ~$180.

The $195 BLADE fee includes tip, so the time saved covers the BLADE’s $163 cost. But we’re not finished.

When booking a BLADE, you don’t consider the benefit of the breathtaking helicopter tour of the city, but you immediately experience it. I’ve flown into and out of the city, and the experience is equally impressive. Normally, people pay for that privilege.

I estimate the BLADE flight time to be ~5-7 minutes. At 5 minutes, it should be worth at least $260 / 15 × 5 = $86. They aren’t highlighting things for you, but that’s what your phone is for!

We pay $195 per seat for $266 value via time saved ($180) and extra benefits like a helicopter tour ($86). That seems like a smart financial decision. Suddenly, that helicopter doesn't look so expensive. But is it safe?

This is usually the strongest pushback against helicopters. However, despite the perception, helicopters are much safer than they appear.

First, let’s compare flying on a commercial helicopter like BLADE to other forms of air travel. BLADE helicopters are considered civil helicopter operations, including sightseeing tours, charters, air ambulance, news agencies, film agencies, and agricultural operations. In that group, the fatality rate is ~0.62 per 100,000 flight hours.

For commercial non-sightseeing operations like BLADE, safety is even more evident. According to the US Helicopter Safety Team, there hasn’t been a helicopter accident in New York City for as long as the FAA has recorded the data (at least 18 years). So the rate is specifically 0 for commercial non-sightseeing operations. Compare that to other forms of air travel:

An alternative to flying a helicopter is to use a train, which should be extremely safe given the infrequency of major accidents, right?

Not exactly. Train and other wheeled travel accident rates are conveyed in accidents per million miles driven rather than per hour traveled, so we need some math. Train accident rates have been rising and average ~1.4 accidents per 1M miles traveled. Trains travel ~60MPH inclusive of stops (which is why any train on the eastern corridor is no faster than driving), so 1M miles translates to ~17,000 hours of travel. That means trains are closer to 8.3 fatalities per 100,000 hours. Yikes.

Lastly, let’s compare cars like the Uber or taxi I’d normally take. Cars aren’t safe. But just how unsafe surprised me when we compare them using the same metrics as helicopter safety.

At ~40MPH for cars, 1M miles translates to ~25,000 hours. So, 13 deaths per 1M miles driven is 52 fatalities per 100,000 hours driven.

Will autonomous driving save us? No. Even with a generous ~60% reduction in crash rates per million miles driven between normal and L3 autonomous driving, we’re still looking at 21 fatalities per 100,000 hours driven. Try to ignore this when taking your next Uber.

We all fall into this psychological trap. Kobe Bryant's terrible helicopter tragedy, the recent New York sightseeing helicopter crash - these stick in our memory precisely because they're rare. It's the same reason people fear shark attacks but not bee stings, even though bees kill more people annually.

Consider this: multiple plane crashes kill thousands yearly, but a single helicopter accident makes global headlines for weeks. The rarity makes it memorable, which makes it feel common. It's a cognitive bias, not a statistical reality.

This one's interesting because it reveals our perception of control versus actual control. In a helicopter, you have a wider viewing aperture than any plane - no "metal box with tiny porthole" experience. You can see everything happening around you.

You've got a human pilot making real-time decisions, not an autopilot system. You have higher escape capability than a plane at 30,000 feet. Yet we feel more "in control" in a self-driving car or on a train where we literally control nothing.

The control argument falls apart when you realize you have about the same level of control in helicopters as in trains, planes, or increasingly, cars.

The real question isn't why helicopters are scary. The real question is why are we bad at risk and value assessment? We reject the higher cost option due to poor value assessment. We fear the statistically safer option because it feels unfamiliar, while accepting higher risks in our daily commute because they feel normal.

Next time you're stuck in traffic for 120 minutes to get somewhere a helicopter could take you in 10, ask yourself: what are you really afraid of?