Learn About Flight
If you love freedom, you will love aviation.
In past centuries, man dreamed of being free from earthly bounds, to move through time and space like flying creatures. Just over one hundred years ago, mankind developed the science of flight, both fixed-wing and rotary-wing, to allow exploration of airborne freedom. Aviation has changed the world and the history of mankind. Of all the flying machines, we feel the helicopter is special.
Able to hover or to fly at speed, its unique capabilities serve mankind in a multitude of ways, from lifesaving to firefighting to cargo and passenger transport, and in New York City, there is a helicopter airline taking passengers from Manhattan to area airports. The world's largest helicopter association, Helicopter Association International (HAI), lists 28 different types of operations that helicopters conduct, and there are probably more.
The helicopter is uniquely able to provide point-to-point transportation, it's the next best thing to teleportation. In some urban areas, helicopter landing sites are limited, reducing the machine's benefit in some cases.
What the passenger-carrying helicopter provides, really, is time. Life. Capability. Time previously spent on travel by road can instead be spent for business productivity, time with family, in short, an improved life.
But airplanes are also nice machines! If your only exposure to flying has been in airline flight, you're missing something really special. Take a personal introductory flight in a small plane from your local airport, look around the area, learn where the landing sites are that you could use as a pilot or by hiring a small airplane. You might be amazed at the feeling of freedom and power by having control over your own flight path. Airlines are not the only way to get around, you can fly to a destination in a large geographic area faster and more pleasantly (since you're in control) than you can by airline.
Check it out, aviation people are usually pretty friendly.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, AOPA, is the nation's largest pilot organization, and helps introduce the public to flight at its web sites "Learn to Fly", or GA Serving America.