Billionaires Are Taking Private Helicopters to Teterboro

One afternoon in the late ’80s, Oliver Budde, then a paralegal at the law firm Skadden Arps, needed to get to Washington, D.C., from his office in downtown New York quickly. Very quickly: It was nearly 3 p.m., and he had to file paperwork for one of his clients at the Securities and Exchange Commission before 5:30. He had a thought. “I, as the enterprising young guy said, ‘Hey, wait a second. It’s two hours until closing time at the SEC. If you put me on a helicopter over to Teterboro, onto a jet, we can do it,’” Budde tells me.

With his bosses’ approval, the 20-something Budde arrived at the West 30th Street Heliport, a stone’s throw from the West Side Highway, in a black car, with the chopper already warmed up. “We’re at Teterboro like seven minutes later,” he says. “The helicopter was able to touchdown right across from the Learjet, so I literally stepped off the chopper into the jet and down the runway we went.”

Though Budde’s trek might sound like a relic of 1980s Wall Street excess, the helicopter jaunt between West 30th and Teterboro has recently become an increasingly popular choice among the wealthy. Between traffic in New York resembling the opening scene of La La Land and the number of millionaires in New York growing as quickly as prices at Duryea’s, flying private to your private flight out of Teterboro has become the new flying private.

“It’s becoming more and more prevalent,” New York mega-realtor Ryan Serhant says of these five-minute trips, which replace a roughly 25-minute drive to Teterboro (or an hour when there’s traffic). “You’re buying your time back.” Private-aviation services such as Blade, which charters flights to Teterboro from West 30th, beginning at $1,875, and Flexjet, whose flights begin at $4,650, have made the jaunt more accessible. While a majority of travelers still arrive via chauffeured cars, Eli Flint, Flexjet’s helicopter-division president, says he’s noticed an uptick in the practice since the pandemic. “People who had always flown private started flying private more, then never went back,” he says, adding that fliers sometimes prefer the helicopter ride to and from the city because it makes the trip feel more door-to-door. Plus, if the private-jet trip cost tens of thousands, what’s another few grand to avoid the Holland Tunnel?

Still, not everyone is a fan of the experience. Shark Tank panelist Kevin O’Leary tells me that taking a chopper can be dicey, especially during the winter months. “If I leave it to the last minute on the chopper, and all of a sudden the weather turns on you, particularly in January, February, March, what are you going to do?” he says. “That’s not a great option because you can’t be guaranteed getting through inclement weather.”

Others argue that traffic to the far-west section of Manhattan, firing up the chopper, and receiving permission to take off from air-traffic control can render the time-saver as not worth the price. But assessing these flights solely on cost doesn’t account for the “Masters of the Universe” mind-set. “You’re floating above, literally up and over all that traffic,” Budde — who, incidentally, ended up arriving at the government office building minutes late because of D.C. traffic — says. “It is a very exciting feeling.”