Route Profitability for Helicopters

The purpose of this book is to describe a method, based on a set of technical and economic criteria, to estimate the profitability of a route for public passenger transportation by helicopters. We believe that the more intuitive method is to estimate initially the break-even point of economic activity that a transport operator undertakes. In order to make the discussion as light as possible some semplifcations were introduced. These semplifications were based on the level of precision required by the calculation needs. On a few occasions we referred to empirical data because of the inherent difficulty to collect definitive data, Data as such sale price of helicopters are never willingly "disclosed" by manufacturers. Nonetheless for each figure it has reported the source or the calculation mechanism in order to make it simple to apply in different cases. We believe that nowadays the aviation expertise should always be accompanied by an economic vision in order to avoid unsustainable business or worse a loss of money. The report is a valuable aid for students of aerospace engineering, or for planner of helicopter routes, to estimate the economic capacity of a transport operator vs a business plan. We recommend some some previous knowledges to use this book, particularly in reading the diagrams depicted into a helicopter flight manual; the analysis of the breakeven point of a business; and finally the knowledge of the use of electronic spreadsheets: such as: LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, MS Excel, or similars. Read more