Helicopters have long been used by the very wealthy to achieve things and reach places that would otherwise be beyond even their extended reach, but their use on the back of explorer or expedition vessels to reach some of the most inaccessible places on Earth is a relatively new trend.
Over the last five years, Quark Expeditions and the Scenic Group have each launched operations with luxury expeditionary vessels (the Ultramarine and Scenic Eclipse, respectively), offering well-heeled clients the opportunity to gain truly unique first-hand experiences in parts of the world previously only visited by scientists and explorers (if at all). And one of the most vital components enabling this connection is the helicopter.
Hand-in-hand with the development of VIP expeditionary tourism, there has been a huge surge of interest in — and creation of — explorer vessels. These are smaller private yachts, typically designed for around 20 guests, and they combine the luxury of superyachts with the capability and ruggedness of expeditionary vessels. Built for use in polar regions, and designed with self-sufficiency and long range in mind, they also have lots of storage space to carry various toys — such as jetskis, speedboats, submarines, and helicopters.
The growth in this market appears to come from an increasing interest among the super wealthy in the ability to access remote destinations, and the experiential side of yachting. An explorer or expeditionary vessel offers the promise and potential of a pioneer.
Building a new niche
Felix Christians has had a front-row seat to the growth of this niche market, having served as director of helicopter operations at Quark Expeditions from March 2020 until September 2024, and is now offering his expertise as a consultant through his company Helicopters on Yachts.
A pilot and aviation broker, Christians was on a break from a piloting contract when the opportunity with Quark presented itself.
The job was to create a helicopter program with two aircraft on an expedition-style ship. Smaller than a cruise ship — catering to up to 199 guests rather than thousands — the Ultramarine was designed and built to explore the polar regions. During the Northern Hemisphere summer, it offers cruises ranging from seven to 21 days to Greenland, Svalbard and the Canadian High Arctic. It then transits to the Antarctic to explore areas including Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula during the Southern Hemisphere summer.
“The goal was to fly guests around for sightseeing, but also very specifically to land them, for example, and go kayaking in a glacier lake that only exists that season, or to go hiking on a mountain or glacier that no one’s ever been to before — to find new things for people to do,” said Christians.
From the aviation perspective, the challenge would be maintaining a packed schedule that required flights almost every day, and could see the entire quota of passengers needing to be transferred to shore for an excursion. Simply figuring out how to manage the flow of people through the ship to the aircraft, transferred to the shore, and then back again — without missing lunch or dinner — was a feat.
In establishing such a program, there were two main obstacles. Firstly, in ensuring the crews, ships and infrastructure were prepared for the level of helicopter operations required; and then clearing through the regulatory challenges posed by offering commercial flights in different countries.
“No one had done this [ship-based helicopter tourism flights] on a commercial level,” said Christians. “Super yachts and explorer yachts exist and people use helicopters to fly around them, but it’s all private. The regulatory side of things is quite easy to accomplish on a private ticket, but on a commercial level, if you show up to a country and say, ‘We’d like to sell tickets for this in your country,’ it ruffles some feathers.”
The solution, he said, required a mixture of lobbying, education, and commitments to safe and responsible operation.
“There’s a lot of community engagement and relationship building,” he said. “You have to make guarantees that you’re going to behave yourself and operate safely and consider and respect the local hunting rights and environments.”
In Greenland, for example, this required researching the migrating patterns of caribou and polar bears to ensure any potential visit wouldn’t disrupt them, which could have denied hunters their traditional game.
The nature of each expedition is that it’s very much not a cookie-cutter experience with a set itinerary of what location will be visited at a specific time — the uniqueness is a selling point. This presents obvious planning challenges.
“You’re constantly switching from Plan A, by the time you get to four days into the voyage, you’re on Plan F, and things just move from there,” said Christians. “I’d get a call telling me they needed a new permit for tomorrow and I had six hours to get it done. I’d be on the phone with the guys in Greenland to sort out the paperwork and red tape — it could get very busy!”
A Unique Environment
Quark operates two Airbus H145s on the Ultramarine. The size of the aircraft was dictated by the company’s need to be able to transport as many people as quickly as possible.
Pilots and engineers are provided by Starspeed, with the ship typically carrying two pilots and one engineer (although three pilots and two engineers can be on board during busier expeditions).
While Quark does have some input in the aviation experience it wanted from pilots — 3,500 hours total flight time, 500 hours on type with instrument flight rules and offshore experience — Christians said their non-aviation qualities are just as important.
“We had to make sure we got guys that that can do the work from an aviation perspective, but were also social enough that they could mingle well with the guests at dinner and share stories, and be agreeable,” he said. “To do that every day — that’s a challenge for some people.”
Pilots typically perform high-altitude snow condition training in Switzerland before joining an expedition for the first time, to help prepare for polar conditions.
“It’s not that we make a point of flying in bad weather, because there’s no point in that for tourists — they want to go see stuff,” said Christians. “But the weather changes really, really quickly in Antarctica, so it’s good to have that extra bit of training under their belts before they started with us.”
The Ultramarine has two helidecks (one mid-ship and one on the aft) and two hangars. The center helideck isn’t used for passengers, serving instead as a transitory pad for the aircraft to arrive at and stay in the hangar.
“The aft Deck is the active deck, so there’s a lot of movement going back and forth,” said Christians. “If an aircraft needs to land and it’s not being used, it can just go land and pause on the mid deck, without having us to wrap the aircraft up and put it away in a hangar while the other one’s waiting.”
With the aircraft living on the ship for longer periods, the hangars needed to be certified as line maintenance stations under part 145 — which meant a requirement for things such as secured and trackable parts storage, the ability for humidity and temperature control, and blade racks on the wall.
With the requirement for remote operation, spares are crucial. Between seasons — in May and June — the aircraft visit Airbus’s maintenance facility in Trento, Italy, for an annual inspection.
Servicing a growing industry
With operations on the Ultramarine now fully up to speed, Christians is offering his expertise to others working in the burgeoning market of expedition and explorer vessels. Quark has its Ultramarine, Scenic has two expeditionary vessels and a third set to launch in a couple of years, all with two helicopters (Airbus H130s), and Eyos Expeditions offers charters with a range of expedition yachts.
Master Dutch shipbuilder Damen Yachting alone is in the midst of a 10-vessel explorer build program.
“The industry is growing, and there’s a lot of money being pumped into it,” said Christians, estimating the cost of an expeditionary vessel to be anywhere from $150 to $200 million, and explorer vessels to be in the range of $40 to $50 million.
“Private yachts have just been flying under the radar without [aviation] permits, and they just go wherever they want to go,” he said explaining the changing dynamic. “If somebody says something, they just leave the area. But being that there’s so many more people doing this now, you can’t operate like that anymore — you’ve got to get the proper permits.”
The explorer yachts are targeted at a new type of yacht owner, said Christians. “They’re younger, they’re more ambitious in terms of going out and seeing the world. They’re going to these remote places like Patagonia and the Atacama Desert, and they’re using their yachts to get there and then they’re flying around in the helicopters and doing fun adventure activities. And then it becomes a commercial operation, because they’re renting them out and they’re making money with them when they’re not using them. And so the regulations become quite different from a maritime perspective, but also from an aviation perspective.”
With this in mind, Christians said there needs to be better education of the maritime industry as to aviation requirements in terms of safe operation, risk management — and community relations.
“There’s a bit of a gap in the market in the way that commercial helicopter operations on the back of vessels are conducted,” he said. “Everyone’s dealing with the same regulatory problems, the same training issues, the same way ships are managing the aviation infrastructure — because it’s an afterthought on most ships.”
He said the best approach is to involve an aviation consultant from the very earliest stages of the vessel build, to provide advice on the layout and the equipment and provisions required.
Christians gave the example of an owner asking for a helideck and the shipbuilder putting one on — without understanding that helicopter operations will also require a pilot to have their own quarters (and the ability to sleep alone) within the crew section, or having the knowledge as to how to properly store aviation fuel.
“The ship should be educated on what it means to have the responsibility of having an aviation component on board,” he said. “A lot of the responsibility is put on the aircraft operator, which is wrong, because the captain is the final authority of the ship, and any operation that starts and finishes with the ship is under their responsibility.”
While this type of work will undoubtedly remain a small niche, it is growing — and clearly requires careful thought on both the ship-based and land-based side of operations to provide the sort of service the exacting clientele will expect.