Prices
A helicopter ride Los Angeles operators sell to visitors starts at $159 for ten minutes and runs to $1,198 for a Downtown rooftop landing. The gap is not really about luxury. It is about how many minutes you buy and which airfield you leave from, and both of those are printed on the listing if you know where to look.
Quick answer
A helicopter ride Los Angeles visitors can book online costs from $159 a person for ten minutes, $199 for the twenty-minute flight that carries more reviews than the rest of this page put together, and $299 for thirty minutes after dark. Private aircraft start at $640 for the whole helicopter rather than per seat. Parking at the airfield and the fuel surcharge some operators add at check-in are not always in the headline price.
Every trip, current fare
Ordered by fare. The cost-per-minute column is the one that actually settles arguments, because a ten-minute flight and an hour are not the same product sold at different prices.
| Flight | Length | Price | Kind | Cost per minute | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hollywood & Beverly Hills Celebrity Helicopter TourTwenty minutes, and the best evidenced flight here | 20 min | $199 | Day | $9.95 | 4.9 · 916 |
| Hollywood Sign & Universal Studios Helicopter TourTen minutes, and the cheapest on the page | 10 min | $159 | Day | $15.90 | 4.6 · 127 |
| Los Angeles: Downtown LA Cityscape Helicopter TourTwenty minutes over Downtown | 20 min | $239 | Day | $11.95 | 4.0 · 1 |
| Hollywood Sign & Downtown Los Angeles Helicopter TourThe Sign and Downtown in one flight | 25 min | $274 | Day | $10.96 | 5.0 · 3 |
| Los Angeles Night Helicopter Tour: Hollywood & City LightsThirty minutes over the city after dark | 30 min | $299 | Night | $9.97 | 4.9 · 91 |
| California Coastline & Hollywood Celebrity Helicopter TourHollywood and the Pacific in one flight | 30 min | $299 | Coast | $9.97 | 4.9 · 60 |
| Los Angeles Helicopter Tour: Hollywood, DTLA & Beverly HillsHollywood, Downtown and Beverly Hills | 30 min | $299 | Day | $9.97 | New |
| Los Angeles: Malibu and Hollywood Flight TourSeventy-five minutes up the coast | 75 min | $349 | Coast | $4.65 | 4.3 · 56 |
| Los Angeles: Hollywood Flight TourA full hour over the city | 1 h | $388 | Day | $6.47 | 4.7 · 49 |
| Los Angeles: Night Flight TourThe longest night flight here | 1 h | $399 | Night | $6.65 | 4.3 · 22 |
| The LA Helicopter Tour: Beverly Hills, DTLA & HollywoodThirty minutes across three districts | 30 min | $399 | Day | $13.30 | New |
| Los Angeles Helicopter Tour & Malibu Mountaintop LandingIt lands on a Malibu mountaintop | 1.5 h | $649 | Landing | $7.21 | 5.0 · 30 |
| Los Angeles: Private 1-Hour Sightseeing Helicopter TourA private hour, just your group | 1 h | $640 | Private | $10.67 | 5.0 · 43 |
| Los Angeles: Downtown Rooftop Landing Helicopter TourA Downtown rooftop landing — the price anchor | 1.5 h | $1,198 | Landing | $13.31 | New |
What the money buys
Minutes, airfield, seats, and whether it touches down.
Minutes in the air. This is most of the price. Ten minutes is one loop past the Hollywood Sign and back. Twenty adds Beverly Hills and Griffith Observatory. Thirty reaches Downtown or the coast. An hour does the basin end to end. Nothing else on the listing moves the fare as much.
Which airfield you leave from. Los Angeles has no single tour heliport. Flights go from Van Nuys, Burbank, Long Beach, Torrance and Fullerton, and the drive to the wrong one can be an hour of your day. A cheaper helicopter ride Los Angeles listing is sometimes cheaper because it starts further from where the Sign actually is.
How many seats the fare covers. Shared flights are priced per person and you sit with strangers. Private flights are priced per aircraft: $640 looks steep next to $199 until you divide it by three passengers.
Whether it lands anywhere. Two listings here put the skids down — on a Malibu ridge and on a Downtown rooftop. That is a permission, a second landing site and ground time, and it is why they sit at the top of the table.
What the headline price does not include
None of them is ruinous. All of them surprise people at check-in.
Several Los Angeles operators reserve the right to add one when fuel spikes. It is usually in the small print of the listing rather than the price box.
Van Nuys and Burbank charge for the lot. Budget a few dollars and arrive before you need to hunt for a space.
Free, but not optional. Passengers over roughly 250 lb are often asked to buy a second seat, and on a shared helicopter ride Los Angeles flight operators will not waive it.
Some operators sell a photo package on the ground. Your own phone through the window is free and, from the front left seat, usually better.
A rideshare from Santa Monica to Van Nuys at the wrong hour costs more than you think and takes longer than the flight.
Book direct
The cheapest helicopter ride Los Angeles, the best evidenced, the one after dark, and the private aircraft.
★ 4.6 · 127 reviews
★ 4.9 · 916 reviews
★ 4.9 · 91 reviews
★ 5.0 · 43 reviews
Cost per minute
Ten minutes costs the most per minute. The hour costs the least.
Divide the fare by the minutes and the table turns over. The $159 flight works out at about $15.90 a minute. The $199 flight, twice as long, works out at about $9.95 — the lowest rate on this page. You are paying a fixed cost for the aircraft, the pilot, the startup and the taxi out either way, and the short flight spreads it across fewer minutes.
That does not make ten minutes wrong. If you only want the Hollywood Sign face on and a photograph of it, ten minutes is the whole errand and the cheapest helicopter ride Los Angeles sells. But if you are weighing $159 against $199, the second one is better value per minute in the air and carries seven times the reviews.
The same arithmetic punishes the hour-long flights: $388 for sixty minutes is about $6.47 a minute, which is the best rate here, but only if you actually want sixty minutes over a city you have already driven across.
The cheapest flight on this page and the best-rated flight on this page are $40 apart.
Which flight is best→Common questions
From $159 a person for ten minutes over the Hollywood Sign. Twenty minutes with Beverly Hills and Griffith Observatory is $199, thirty minutes from $299, and a full hour from $388.
Los Angeles has several general-aviation airfields with room for tour operators and no single congested heliport charging landing fees on every rotation. The competition between Van Nuys, Burbank, Long Beach and Torrance keeps the twenty-minute fare near $199.
Per person on every shared flight here. The two private listings, at $640 and $1,198, are priced for the whole aircraft.
It is customary in Los Angeles and not expected. Ten to twenty per cent of the fare, in cash, if the pilot made the flight better than the itinerary promised.
Fares here do not move much by season. What moves is availability: sunset slots in summer and the two weeks around Christmas sell out first at every price point.
You can, at some operators, if there is a seat. But the $199 flight is the one most often full, and walking up to the counter at Burbank on a Saturday is how people end up not flying at all.
Go deeper
No road, no public access. Why the air is the only front-on view.
The verdictFourteen listings, and the four worth your money.
At nightTwo listings, and a completely different city underneath.
DowntownThe towers, the stadiums and the basin they stand on.
PrivateFrom $640 for the aircraft, and when it works.
How longTen minutes, thirty or an hour — what each one actually covers.
Hollywood & Beverly Hills Celebrity Helicopter Tour
★ 4.9 · 646 reviews · Free cancellation 24 h