Where do New York helicopter tours take off from?

The Downtown Manhattan Heliport sits on Pier 6 at the southern end of the East River waterfront, a few minutes’ walk from Wall Street and about twenty minutes from Midtown on the subway. Six of the twelve flights on this page lift off from there, including the two with more than seven thousand reviews each.

Flights from Pier 6 follow water routes. A typical loop runs south down the East River, out into the Upper Bay around the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, then north up the Hudson with Manhattan on your right, turning at some point between the Midtown piers and the George Washington Bridge depending on how many minutes you bought. The helicopter stays over water rather than crossing the island.

That sounds like a limitation and it is genuinely not, for one reason: the best views of Manhattan are side-on. From the Hudson you see the whole west face of the island as a wall, one tower at a time, with the grid running away behind it. From directly above you see rooftops. Which of those you prefer is a real question, and it is the question this page exists to answer before you book rather than after.

The practical case for Pier 6 is simpler still. It is in the city. You can fly at nine in the morning and be at breakfast in SoHo by half past ten, which is not true of either other departure point.

Operators based on the New Jersey side of the Hudson run their own heliports and their own routes, and those routes cross Manhattan rather than circling it. On a New Jersey departure the helicopter comes east over the Hudson, passes over the island itself, and Central Park arrives directly beneath you — 843 acres of green cut clean into the grid, about four kilometres long, with the reservoir in the middle of it.

Three flights on this page lift off from the New Jersey side: the twenty-five-minute skyline tour at $305 with 481 reviews at 4.8, the night flight at $259, and the forty-minute sunset tour at $382.

The cost is time. Allow about an hour each way from Midtown by car, and understand that this is the part people underestimate. One traveller on a New York forum put it bluntly to someone planning a dawn flight: you do realise you have to get to and from New Jersey? It is a fair question. If the day is tight, take a Manhattan departure. If the picture in your head is the park from above, no Manhattan departure will give it to you and the two hours are the price of admission.

Westchester County Airport sits outside White Plains, about forty-eight kilometres north of Midtown. Four flights on this page leave from there, and they are the longest shared options available: thirty to forty-five minutes in the air rather than fifteen to twenty-five.

A Westchester flight comes south down the Hudson with the Palisades — the cliff wall on the New Jersey bank — on your right, reaches Manhattan from the north, and circles the island before heading back. You get more river, more approach and more time, and the terminal is a small quiet airport rather than a busy city pad with a queue behind you.

This is also where the private cabins live. The couples flight at $937 with 295 reviews at 4.9, the charter for two to six at $1,610, and the flight lesson at $663 all depart from Westchester.

Getting there: the Metro-North Harlem line from Grand Central to White Plains takes about forty minutes, and a cab from the station to the airport is another fifteen. Driving is roughly an hour without traffic, which in this direction usually means not at rush hour.