every major U.S. city – Honolulu, Denver, New Orleans, Dallas, Washington — and in London and Paris. Boston had its HubExpress service, which hired as a consultant Rhett Flater, now executive director of the American Helicopter Society International. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston and Los Angeles, among others, had competing services.

The helicopter airlines quickly mimicked their fixed-wing brethren. Los Angeles’ Airspur established a hub-and-spoke operation. New York Helicopter was included in TWA’s frequent flyer program. Incentives were offered. For example, Pan Am’s helicopter service in New York gave free rides to first-class passengers in its carrier’s jets. Confidence in the market ran high, and the Helicopter Airline Assn. was formed, essentially before the market gained footing.

Helicopter airlines employed a wide range of aircraft, from Bell JetRangers andAgusta A109s to Sikorsky S-58Ts. Westland Helicopters — looking for missions for its WG-30, a civil aircraft with the Lynx’s dynamic components that entered service in 1982 — zeroed in on the helicopter airline market and met some success, taking orders from scheduled services in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

But by the end of the decade, the rotary-wing airline market had ebbed, the victim of an unworkable business model, and so, too, prospects for the WG-30. The aircraft served briefly in the lower North Sea and was reprieved when India’s government ordered 21 WG-30s, primarily for offshore support, in the mid-1980s. Ultimately, however, the aircraft never found a viable mission.

Helicopter airlines, talk of tilt-rotors, and a healthy corporate helicopter market combined to spotlight an urgent need for