Kenny Keller and Chris explain that helicopters can land almost anywhere, but you need landowner permission and must check local ordinances. Cities often restrict landings, though emergency landings for safety are always allowed.
All right, Hogs Daily flight brief. Welcome back. Today's episode. Can I land anywhere I want? What's the regulation? I do have a video on this. This was very early on in the.
Copy with Kenny series.
I'll put that link down below. I've been enjoying your perspective, Chris, so I'm gonna let you take the lead on this. Since I've answered this question in the video more than once. What do you think?
Well, what is the interaction of the helicopter? I mean, it's more expensive, it takes more to maintain. It's got. It's an airplane. But you cannot land in your backyard in an airplane. Right. So that's why we love helicopters. As a charter pilot, that is one of the things that my company, Sweet Helicopters, emphasizes to the businessman or whomever is that we can take you directly to your place of employment or your business. If you have the room, we'll land right there. You can go inside, you can do your hour meeting, then you come back out, you load up in the helicopter, and off we go to another meeting or a. Another property, whatever you want to do. So that's the what, that's what. The attraction of helicopter, that we can land anywhere that we want. As long as the rotors can get in there, we can land. Now does that mean that I can, when I'm out here flying like we are right now, that I can just land right there in that farm field? Because I can land there. Absolutely not.
Okay, good answer.
We, even in the charter world, anytime that we land off airport, which is most of the time, we always call and get permission from the landowner. Okay. I just don't show up at that golf course. And that's. That's a big thing that we do. We take people golfing. Sure. I don't just show up at the golf course, land on hole number nine, drop off, and then take off. I do not do that. We always call and get permission from the landowner. So short, sweet answer is we can land anywhere. However, you need permission from the landowner. So when I train and I'm training, my students do confined areas and I find a hole in this, in a group of trees. Yes. I make my approach and we go in there, but we do not touch down. So it might upset the landowner for whatever reason. But as long as I don't touch down, I am not. I'm not doing anything wrong. Sure. And funny story, if I can tell a story real quick. Tell a story. I was doing a flight with a student. We were doing confined areas. I found a farm field that I liked that was next to some trees and set some wire so, you know the obstacles. So we make our approach in there. Nice approach. Don't land. We pick it up, we take off again. Two days later, the owner comes into the airport and has a picture of us from a deer camp and wanted to talk to the airport manager and threw the picture down on the counter and said, does this helicopter belong here? Are these your people? And the airport manager's like, yeah, they train here, you know. Well, he landed and he scared away my deer. That's what he said. And I said I wasn't there. But all I can say is that, first of all, we didn't do anything wrong. You may not have liked it, but we did not do anything wrong because we did not touch down on your property. Right. Okay. So that's all it is to it. Just because a person doesn't like it doesn't mean that we did anything wrong. Now, of course, we want to fly neighborly and make people happy, so we obviously never went back to that spot. Right?
But.
As long as we don't land without permission, then we're good. Now, if you want to land. If you want to land in your own backyard or if you want to land in your passenger's yard or they own property, then by all means you. You can land there. Now, again, I say that, but if you're landing inside, like, a town or something, you want to make sure that there's no local ordinances or any city zones or whatever. Local zones that say no aircraft landing or something. And that might sound funny, but actually, I fly to Chicag a lot for the charter, and Chicago actually has an ordinance where you cannot land anywhere like downtown unless you're landing at the vertiport or you're landing.
Great examples.
And there was an actual guy that did that, and he got a ticket for it. So, you know. So, yes, we can land pretty much anywhere as long as we have permission. That was kind of long and drawn out. Sorry. What do you got for it?
Last time I did that, I had a lot of people that asked extra questions, and I think you covered most of them. You're right. You got to at least check and make sure there's no local ordinance, because that's not real prevalent. But it's out there. There are places that don't want you landing there. Great answer. I landed once in the. In the. For a safety reason in a high school parking lot in bad weather. And the superintendent came out, the school was closed. It was on a weekend they had event later in the day, but the guy came out screaming mad. Oh, he was so mad. And he called the police. In the end, what happened? Nothing.
And I should say that too.
We legitimately landed because the weather was bad.
There is always that exception, which is the emergency exhibition. Exactly. You know, if I need to set down because of weather or an emergency with the aircraft and I'm going to set it down and I will deal with the police, I will deal with the landowner, I will deal with all that later. As far as I. All I care about right now is getting on the ground for whatever reason, I need to be on the ground.
Absolutely. You don't want to. Don't wreck the helicopter because you were afraid to make somebody mad.
Yes.
If it's in the essence of safety because you got a problem, land anywhere you can find that you can safely get it on the ground.
Exactly right.
Exactly. Awesome. That was a great one. Give your comments down below, let us know what you think. And next one up is. Passenger and pilot weight limitations can be a touchy subject, but this is a great subject because it is what it is. So the next one up is pilot. Pilot and passenger weight limitations. Subscribe to the channel, click the bell, give us a thumbs up and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out. It.
