Did you know NYC once flew helicopters from skyscraper rooftops to airports in 1965? Here’s how it all went wrong

For a brief moment in the 1960s, and again, very briefly in 1977, a passenger in Midtown Manhattan could step into an office tower, take an elevator to the roof, and board a helicopter bound for the airport. It was an idea shaped by the optimism of the jet age, when speed, height and technology were seen not just as conveniences, but as the future of urban life. The building was the Pan Am Building, now known as the MetLife Building, and its rooftop helipad was meant to turn that vision into routine.

A skyscraper built for a different kind of arrival

When the Pan Am Building opened in 1963 at 200 Park Avenue, it was conceived as more than just an office block. Backed by Pan American World Airways and championed by its president Juan Trippe, the structure was designed to function almost like an extension of the airline itself, a “city within a city” that could move people as efficiently as planes moved across continents.

The building’s infrastructure reflected that ambition. It featured dozens of high-speed elevators, including double-deck systems, and an upper-lobby design that could process thousands of workers and visitors each day. At the top, the 57th and 58th floors housed the “Copter Club,” a lounge where passengers could check in, wait, and then move directly to the rooftop helipad.

The idea was simple: bypass Manhattan’s traffic entirely. Instead of travelling across the city to the airport, the airport would effectively come to Midtown.

The helipad begins, and struggles to last

Trial helicopter operations began in 1965, using Boeing Vertol 107 aircraft operated by New York Airways. From the rooftop, passengers could fly directly to John F. Kennedy Airport and, for a time, Teterboro Airport.

For a short period, the concept worked. During the 1966 transit strike, when much of New York’s public transport shut down, the rooftop operation reportedly handled around 700 passengers a day. It was, in moments like that, a glimpse of what its backers had imagined, a multi-level city where ground congestion could be avoided altogether.

But the problems were immediate and persistent. The helicopters were loud, producing a level of noise that drew constant complaints from both tenants and neighbouring buildings. Demand also fell short of expectations once the novelty wore off and normal transit resumed.

By 1968, just three years after it began, the service was shut down.

A second attempt, and a fatal flaw

Nearly a decade later, in early 1977, the helipad reopened. This time, New York Airways operated Sikorsky S-61 helicopters, a civilian adaptation of the military Sea King. The relaunch was meant to address earlier shortcomings and make the service economically viable.

One operational change was central to that effort: a procedure known as “hot loading.” Instead of shutting down the aircraft between flights, helicopters would keep their engines running and rotor blades spinning while passengers disembarked and new passengers boarded. The approach reduced turnaround time, allowing more flights per day, but it also significantly increased risk.

On May 16, 1977, that risk became catastrophic.

At around 5:35pm, a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter landed on the rooftop with its rotors still spinning as passengers exited and others waited nearby. A structural failure occurred in the landing gear, later traced by the National Transportation Safety Board to metal fatigue in a critical component.

As the landing gear collapsed, the helicopter tipped onto its side. The spinning rotor blades struck the deck, breaking apart violently.

Four people waiting to board on the rooftop were killed by the impact and debris. Several others were injured.

Debris falling into the city

The damage did not remain confined to the roof.

Fragments of the rotor blades were thrown outward with immense force. One large section struck the building itself, reportedly hitting a window on an upper floor before splitting apart. Part of the debris continued down to street level, where it struck and killed a pedestrian on Madison Avenue, a woman from the Bronx who had been waiting for a bus.

Other fragments were found blocks away, underscoring the scale and unpredictability of the failure.

It was a scene that unfolded simultaneously at two levels of the city, on the roof and on the street, and it exposed the risks of placing active aviation operations atop dense urban space.

Why it failed, and what followed

Investigators determined that the cause of the crash was not pilot error, but structural failure. The NTSB found that a component in the landing gear, made from 7075-T73 aluminium, had developed a crack over time due to corrosion and repeated stress. The flaw propagated unnoticed until it failed under load.

The fact that the helicopter was operating under “hot loading” conditions meant that the rotors were still spinning at full speed when the aircraft collapsed, amplifying the severity of the incident.

The response came immediately, resulting in the permanent closure of the rooftop helipad that same day, after which it never reopened for commercial service.

The accident also marked the end of an era. High-volume rooftop helicopter commuting in New York effectively ceased, with regulators and city officials moving operations away from densely built areas toward waterfront heliports, where the risks to people on the ground could be reduced.

A vision that didn’t survive reality

The Pan Am Building helipad had embodied a specific moment in urban and technological thinking, one shaped by the belief that cities could be layered vertically, with air travel integrated into everyday movement.

In practice, the idea proved unsustainable. Noise, cost, safety and the realities of operating aircraft in dense urban environments all worked against it.

Today, the rooftop of the MetLife Building is quiet. The building itself functions much like any other major commercial tower in New York, a high-end office address housing large firms, with retail concourses, cafés, and everyday amenities woven into its lower levels. Peregrine falcons have also been known to nest on its upper reaches, a quieter, unintended use of a space once built for helicopters. It remains one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks, even if its most ambitious feature is no longer in use.

The company that gave the building its name followed a similarly dramatic arc. Pan American World Airways, once the defining airline of the jet age and a symbol of American global reach, entered a long decline in the decades that followed. It ultimately ceased operations in 1991 after financial struggles and industry changes it could not overcome.

There have since been periodic efforts to revive the Pan Am name in limited forms, trading on its legacy and cultural weight. None have restored it to the stature it once held, but the brand continues to resurface, with occasional talk of a broader comeback, recent developments even hint at a possible return to the skies, as its current owners have reportedly begun the FAA certification process.