I am heading to the BI next week and i want to go on a helicopter tour of the lava flows which happen to be an outside flow right now - too cool! Thing is... Blue Hawaiian is bloody expensive and frankly I find it extremely unlikely that there is not another decent vendor on the island - there are lots of heli companies.

Can anyone recommend a company OTHER than Blue Hawaiian? The others are a lot cheaper in some cases but I definitely want to be safe!

Thanks!!

We flew BH, but here is the list in order of preference listed in the blue book:

BH
Tropical Helicopters
Sunshine H
Safari H
Mauna Loa H

Do a search on these and see what you think. Good luck!

OSB

We went on a helicopter ride over Kauai. It was unreal. We loved it. We are sorry that we didn't also do a helicopter trip over the Big Island, to see the volcanos more close up.When we had toured the Volcano National park, many roads were closed & we never got to see much of the volcanos due to a lack of time.Don't forget to tip the pilot prior to the flight for a better chance of preferred searing(even though it is based on weight distribution).

Is Volcano Air Tours the only company to fly over the volcano on Big Island from Maui, which is where we are staying? The flight from Kahului AIrport is the sunset tour and costs a whopping $335.00.

Linleedo1:
[.Don't forget to tip the pilot prior to the flight for a better chance of preferred searing(even though it is based on weight distribution).]

That would not have been possible at BH,
as the pilot was not met until we were
boarding. He was in his seat in the helicopter. Other employees took the info & assisted in the seat arrangment ( & I'm not sure who, exactly).
We did end up with front seating though.
The seating WAS actually based on weight.