Story ID: 131BurningManAINOct16EditedByAY_NM
S-76 Rotates into Burning Man
By: Mark Huber
Caption: One helicopter operator gave attendees a new way to arrive in Black Rock in style.
Word Count: 430
Arriving by air at the annual counter-culture Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock desert is not new; private pilots and fixed-wing charter operators have been doing it for years at the temporary airport (88NV) established there each year for the festival. What was new this year is that you could do it from Reno in a Santa Barbara Helicopters Sikorsky S-76A+ operated by Coastal Helicopters.

While some hard-core “Burners” took umbrage with this new level of luxury conveyance, posting related hostilities on social media, Santa Barbara Helicopters’ Eric Haymes said the service was well received by its more affluent target audience who were willing to pay around $10,000 each way—chartering the whole helicopter—for the 40-minute flight from Atlantic Aviation at Reno/Tahoe International Airport. Haymes said round-trip customers received a slight discount. “It’s the most luxurious way to arrive, but definitely not the most affordable,” Haymes conceded, acknowledging a plethora of lower-cost fixed-wing, largely turboprop, options available through the ad hoc “Burner Express” online booking service.

“It was a good experience,” Haymes said, “quite different from anything else we’ve ever been involved in. It’s a pretty interesting group of people up there in Black Rock. We got in a little late in the game, getting approved to fly there only a few weeks out so we weren’t as busy as we could have been.”

Haymes said the desert conditions presented the biggest operational challenge for running a rotorcraft service. “It’s very dirty out there, very dusty. We’d have the helicopter all spit-shined when it would leave and it would come back covered in dust and we’d have to power wash it and wash the engines and get it ready for the next flight. They close the airport at 6:30 p.m. so there were only daylight operations. We were up there a full week. We had people up there a few days before the event opened who were building their camps,” he said. The S-76 flew with two-pilot crews. Passengers were provided with a variety of cold, non-alcoholic hydrations to steel them for the arid temperatures at their destination, which occasionally soar into the triple digits. 

Coastal Helicopters is based in the Los Angeles Basin at Brackett Field (KPOC) in LaVerne, Calif., and operates the Airbus Helicopters AS350, Bell 206 and 205, and the S-76. In addition to charter, it has extensive firefighting experience. Haymes recently purchased a second S-76 that he plans to add to Coastal’s Part 135 certificate by year-end.