A tourist says she was charged the price of a doors-off helicopter tour, but when she got to the helipad she learned of an expensive and disappointing catch. Checkey Beckford reports.
Paige Asachika booked a doors-off helicopter flight for a trip to New York City, paying more than $464 for the opportunity snap pictures of the Big Apple unobstructed.
But when the California couple got to the helipad, they found there was an expensive and disappointing catch: because of the deadly helicopter crash in the East River earlier this month, the tours had been temporarily banned by the FAA, and the tour company wasn’t going to adjust the price of the flight for the less expensive doors-on flights.
“This was one of the reasons I was coming to New York, I was really excited about it,” Asachika said she complained about the $266 price difference -- doors-on flights only cost $99 per person -- in an email, but was told in a response that the pricing wasn’t changed since the couple was in the air for the same amount of time.
“I kept getting the same generic response from everyone, ‘we understand your concerns, there’s nothing we can do about it,’” she said. “Which is complete BS to me.”
Asachika wasn’t the only unhappy customer, either. Other reviewers complained on TripAdvisor that the ban ended up costing them three times the cost of a doors-on flight.
To boot, the doors-off flights are still being sold by the company Asachika booked her tour with. FlyNYON was offering doors-off tours for $219 per seat as of early Friday.
News 4 reached out to FlyNYON seeking comment.
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Asachika, meanwhile, is warning other potential customers.
“It seems like they’re trying to hide it,” she said.
