Try Out a Grand Canyon Helicopter Flight This Easter Holiday
This Easter is a fantastic time to give consideration to taking a Grand Canyon National Park helicopter tour. In this are brief article I identify the best flights and reveal how to get promotions.
Easter is on April 20,
2014, and although the day is on a Sunday and is a holiday too, you can still take a chopper tour of the Grand Canyon since they operate on the usual schedule that day. If this year is similar to 2013, a record number of people will take Easter aerial tours of the Grand Canyon. If you want to take a helicopter tour of the South Rim, your tour will begin in Tusayan, AZ at the Grand Canyon National Park Airport, and if you want to fly over the West Rim, you begin your tour in Las Vegas. The West Rim is a short 50-minute flight east from Vegas. As of now, none of the air tours go between the two rims. You might be able to take a flight out of Vegas on a Vision Airlines 737 jet and go to the South Rim as one leg of a tour. If this works out, I will post an update and let you know. Because of the distances involved, no Vegas choppers fly to the South Rim - it's a 270-mile one-way flight and outside the range of most 'copters. It is possible to go from the city of Vegas to the South Rim though. Just take an airplane to the Grand Canyon National Park Airport near the South Rim where you can hop on a helicopter for your tour. South Rim Chopper ToursThere are two types of South Rim tours, a standard tour and an extended version. The shorter tour is thirty minutes long and the longer one lasts fifty minutes. The standard tour takes off from GCA, flies to the North Rim by way of dramatic Dragoon Corridor (the widest, deepest section of the entire canyon), and then returns. The longer tour covers the same ground but also flies over to the East Rim. This tour offers spectacular views of Imperial Point, Zuni Point, the Desert Watchtower, and Zuni Corridor. Tours Of The West RimThere are two kinds of tours you can take at the West Rim, the air-only tours or landing tours. You have a lot of options here. The air-only flights are ideal when you don't have much time or money to spend on your Grand Canyon tour. These fun tours take off from airfields located in the Las Vegas area and give you a view of the Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, the West Rim, and many scenic points of interest. That being said, I strongly recommend that you spring for a landing tour if it's at all possible. My personal favorite is the landing tour that sets down on the canyon floor. It includes a picnic lunch and about half an hour to explore on foot while you're down there. You'll stand next to the banks of the Colorado River, the force responsible for carving out the canyon over countless millions of years. Grand Canyon West (a/k/a the West Rim) is the only part of the canyon where flying below the rim and landing on the bottom is possible. Another fun landing tour option is one that lands on top of the rim and comes with passes to the Glass Bridge, or Grand Canyon Skywalk. This amazing marvel of construction lets you walk out 70 feet beyond the edge of the canyon and peer through the glass to the canyon floor some 4000 feet beneath you.The Skywalk is made up of 40 huge transparent glass panels that cost $250,000 each. The bridge is amazingly sturdy too, it stands up to winds in excess of 100 mph and even an 8.0 earthquake. As you can imagine, the views from the Skywalk are breathtaking, especially Eagle Point. There is no better way to see the Grand Canyon than by helicopter. A lot of people will be there over Easter, and many of them will want to take tours on Grand Canyon helicopters. With the demand so high, many tours will sell out in advance. The best way to make sure you get the flight you want is to book online at least a week ahead, but 72 hours is the bare minimum. Have a fantastic time as you soar over the Grand Canyon!