Wings Air Helicopters — Local services in Town/Village of Harrison

The tour itself is great. It is definitely a unique experience to see NYC. The booking process was a disaster.

The rep Eric never sent the confirmation, lied about the payment, and argued with me about every single detail, even irrelevant to my booking. I purchased a Groupon for the 30-min tour. Following the instruction, I called to schedule the tour and to extend it to 45-min. I was told just to pay the difference. I then filled the booking form and chose wire transfer as the payment method. No one contacted me since then. Two weeks before the tour, I still have not received instructions for wiring, So I called and asked for a confirmation and wiring information. But Eric said they would not accept the Groupon because the booking form was for the full 45-min. They also charged my credit card for the full amount -- the booking forms asks for a credit card even payment will be done through wire transfer, for deposit as said on the form. He asked me to contact Groupon for refund, which was not accepted because I purchased it more than 30 days ago. So on my third call, I asked Eric to honor the Groupon and refund me for that part. He said that the booking was only for the 45-min (lie), and the difference in charge is too little for wire transfer (lie, again). This is the reason they decided to charge my credit card, which Eric claimed he called me back after receiving the form (lie again). First, I am a small business owner myself and never heard of the "too little for wire" amount. I booked a tour for 2 people, the total of the difference and airport fee, which I expected to pay by wire transfer, is $540. I do not believe this is a small number by any standard. Second, I was shocked and said I never received a call as a notice of change in the payment method. I told him I would show my phone history as proof. He then said he would not accept any of my evidence and would not provide any evidence either showing a call from Wings air -- In fact, I never received a call from them to confirm the booking or any notice, the worst customer service. He then said he will check with the manager and call me back later in the morning.

Of course I never received his call back. So I called Eric around 3 PM, my forth or fifth call, asking for a solution. He said he will have to retrieve my booking form, which took a while. He said they usually destroyed the booking form after receiving them from customer. So I should feel lucky he could even find it. This is nonsense beyond my understanding. How do you keep tracking of booking if you destroy the forms after receiving them? What's even funnier is that the electronic form was sent from a cloud based server, not even directly from Wings Air. I don't think you can "destroy" the cloud copy. But I understood by then that Eric is full of lies and decided not to argue with him. Otherwise he was gonna argue with me on every tiny detail and eventually blame me for everything. So I waited and eventually got the booking confirmed -- still have not received anything in writing about the refund or honoring the Groupon. So I brought my Groupon on the day of tour and confirmed it one more time with the reception.

Tired of my long story? My booking experience was 10 times more exhausting. The tour is of good value. But considering the booking process I would say it's not worthy it. I will definitely choose a different company next time.

----------- Update 22 Oct 2019 --------- The manager Anna replied my review. She explained why the forms were destroyed. But Eric found the form anyway after several weeks of booking. So which one is it: Does Wings Air destroy the forms or not? And why I should be thankful to Eric that he spent so much time on finding the form if it has not been destroyed yet. Her second point is that it would be too expensive for amounts under a thousand. I know banks charge $10-15 for each transfer, and 2-3% for credit cards. So for my payment of $540, the fee is actually the same regardless of the method of payment. She did not respond to Eric's...

I booked a helicopter tour with Wings Air Helicopters for my family of four (including myself) as a special gift to celebrate my parents’ anniversary. I paid $3,000 for a 45-minute flight, specifically choosing this tour because their website promised we would “FLY DIRECTLY OVER PARTS OF MANHATTAN INCLUDING CENTRAL PARK AND THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING ”something that had been a lifelong dream for my parents.Unfortunately, about an hour before our scheduled departure, a mass shooting occurred in Manhattan. Due to this unexpected and serious event, we were informed that “air police” had restricted access to Manhattan airspace. As a result, our flight only circled the outer parts of the city and did not enter Manhattan airspace as advertised.We fully understood and respected the circumstances, however after the flight I politely asked how this situation would be addressed since we didn’t receive the experience we paid for. An employee called his manager/boss, who told me (and I quote), “THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO AND YOU GOT YOUR MONEYS WORTH”, simply because we still had a flight, even though it didn’t include the main attractions we came for. Also their base is located far outside of Manhattan. If you book a 30 minute tour, you barely make it to the city before turning back so in my opinion, anything under 45 minutes doesn’t give you the real NYC helicopter experience and feels misleading.That said, the pilot was excellent, and the flight itself despite the circumstances was smooth and enjoyable. But overall, I’m disappointed in how the company handled the situation and the lack of customer service in response to a $3,000 experience that didn’t deliver on what was...

This was honestly a bad experience. I booked a private helicopter ride for 4 pm on my partners birthday. We got there pretty early because we didn't want to miss our flight and patiently waited. 4:15 comes around and they inform us that the helicopter was not able to fly. They then offer us to do a group flight or a refund and tell us we will see more and the trip will be more like 45 minutes because of the inconvenience. We decide to go on the group flight as we had spent $120 for the ride up and had wasted the day for this adventure. The flight ended up only being 33 minutes long not 45 like they said. I had purchased a go pro and it was suppose to be mounted to the dash... they couldn't mount it and told me to just hold it. They let my partner sit up front. They put the couple on the right side and I sat by myself on the left in back. This was awful for me. The couple to my right were looking out the window and I could not see any of Manhattan. The go pro was wasted. They gave me a $50 credit for the go pro which costs $52, but ultimately this was an absolute disaster of a date. I understand that with flights things can happen but it was not worth it in the end. This was suppose to be special. It was ruined and I felt...