What to Expect on Your First Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour

If you’re visiting Las Vegas, you’ve likely seen touring helicopters soaring across the Las Vegas Strip. Papillon Helicopters offers daily departures over the Las Vegas Strip and to the Grand Canyon on both helicopter tours and sightseeing airplanes.

If you’re thinking about experiencing a helicopter tour during your Las Vegas vacation but are hesitant or nervous, you’ll find all the guidance and information you need to make your first helicopter trip a once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable adventure!

Where Can You Fly on a Day Trip from Las Vegas?

With Papillon, you can experience:

• Las Vegas Strip Helicopter Tour – you should see the neon lights at night!
• Flight to Grand Canyon West - this helicopter tour takes just 70 minutes compared to the 2-hour drive time. This is also the only region of the Grand Canyon where helicopter tours can actually land on the very bottom!
• Airplane Flights to Grand Canyon National Park - after landing at the Grand Canyon Airport, you’ll experience a South Rim helicopter tour over the deepest and widest rock gorges.

Beginning Your Las Vegas Helicopter Tour

Your Las Vegas helicopter tour includes the option to receive shuttle transportation from a variety of hotels located on the Las Vegas Strip and Downtown Las Vegas. Passengers are also welcome to transport themselves to one of our two luxury air terminals. Depending on your tour selection, your flight will depart from either:

• Our Las Vegas air terminal located just off the Strip
• Our state-of-the-art Boulder City air terminal located a short distance from the Las Vegas Strip

Upon arrival, passengers will check in with our friendly staff at the ticket counter using the confirmation information that you will have received within 24 hours of your booking. All passengers will also be discreetly weighed to ensure even distribution when boarding. After being greeted by your pilot and receiving a safety briefing, you’ll be guided onto the tarmac where your luxury helicopter awaits.

Upon boarding, settle into your plush seat, place on your headset so you can communicate with the pilot and other passengers, and soon you’ll gently lift off into the desert sky!

Your Flight from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon

Your flight to the Grand Canyon West will be just over an hour. This peaceful, smooth journey offers aerial views of Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the wild desert expanse through wraparound windows offering 180-degree views. Enjoy choreographed music through your noise-cancelling headphones. Your pilot will point out interesting landmarks, points of interest, and is also available to answer questions.

Soon, the Grand Canyon West will come into view in all its glory. You’ll float over the ancient rippling sandstone walls above the Colorado River that carved them over the course of millennia. Your pilot will begin a slow descent down to the Grand Canyon West air terminal or – depending on your tour choice – the very bottom of the canyon!

What to do at the Grand Canyon

Some helicopter tours, for those who are short on time, only fly over the Grand Canyon West then return to Las Vegas. If you’ve selected a tour that allows ground time at the Grand Canyon, there are a myriad of activities and sightseeing opportunities across the park to enhance your experience.

Grand Canyon West Activities

Undoubtedly the most high-demand experience at the Grand Canyon West is the chance to land on the canyon floor in a helicopter. Some canyon landing tours even include a Colorado River boat ride!

If your tour includes time on the surface, you’ll receive an All Access pass that allows you to enjoy every activity available in the park. Enjoy standing atop the Skywalk, a glass-bottomed bridge that extends 70 feet past the canyon’s edge. You can also use complimentary shuttle transportation to visit Eagle Point and Guano Point, both offering incredible views of the canyon landscape. You can even travel to Hualapai Point, a Native American cultural center that offers handmade crafts for sale, a shooting gallery, a restaurant, and Hualapai ambassadors to meet and greet. The All Access pass also includes a meal credit and a retail credit that can be redeemed at any point during your visit.

Grand Canyon National Park Helicopter Tour

If you’d like to fly to the Grand Canyon National Park (also known as the South Rim), it can only be reached via a touring airplane. Papillon offers daily departures to the Grand Canyon National Park aboard our state-of-the-art sightseeing airplanes featuring climate control, plush seating, oversized windows, and headsets that play music and narration in a variety of languages.

Flights to the Grand Canyon can also be packaged with a South Rim helicopter tour. Upon landing at the Grand Canyon Airport, you’ll board an awaiting helicopter and lift off over the incredible expanse of the South Rim. Enjoy a peaceful flight over the deepest and widest canyon gorges, the oldest exposed rock on Earth, and the Kaibab Forest’s lush greenery.

Helicopter Tour Safety

The safety of our passengers is always the top priority of every member of our staff. Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters is fully certified by the Tour Operators Program of Safety (TOPS), whose standards of safety are even more strict than the FAA. Regular internal and annual external audits ensure that at no point in time are any members of the staff unprepared or lacking training. When flying with a TOPS-certified company like Papillon, guests can be assured that they are touring the safest and most highly trained professionals in the industry.

Learn more about Papillon’s dedication to flight safety and our superior safety qualifications.

Book Your First Helicopter Tour with Papillon!

Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters is the largest and longest-operating air tour company in the world. Every year for nearly 60 years, we’ve had the privilege to transport over 300,000 passengers from around the world to breathtaking destinations like the Grand Canyon West, Grand Canyon National Park, Antelope Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and beyond. We look forward to  the honor of helping you experience your first helicopter tour from Las Vegas!