This exclusive Big Island helicopter tour begins at your hotel door, when you’re picked up in a comfortable van and transported to the Kona airport. It’s here you’ll enjoy your Champagne toast and also receive a fresh flower lei before boarding the awaiting helicopter.
Your tour begins as you soar above fields of jet-black lava outside Kona, which are punctuated by hidden, white beaches and impressively turquoise coves. Watch as the lava rock changes to pastures on the slopes of southern Kohala, which then give way to the verdant rainforest of the Hamakua Coast. Soar above valleys that once housed kings and are now only accessible by air, before flying past snowcapped Mauna Kea en route to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and famous Kilauea volcano. Since the sun will have faded behind the mountains by your arrival at Kilauea, you can make out the eerie, orange glow of Halema‘uma‘u Crater, which houses a bubbling lava lake a few feet below the surface.
As you fly south towards the island’s southern tip, your pilot talks with you via 2-way headset about Big Island history and legends, before soaring over the black-sand beaches of Punalu’u Beach Park. You’ll also get views of Papakolea, the famous green beach, before circling back north above the city of refuge at Pu’uhonua o Honaunau. By the time you fly over Kealakekua Bay, where Captain Cook was infamously killed in a skirmish with native Hawaiians, the sun will be setting on the western horizon and igniting a fire in the sky; it's an experience and a moment that’s completely amplified from hundreds of feet in the air. Who knows? From your vantage point, there’s even the chance you could see the 'green flash' when the sun finally fades out of view.
Finally, this spectacular Big Island helicopter tour lands back at the Kona airport, where you’re comfortably transferred back to your hotel.
