Copter Capers

"My soul is in the sky."

-- "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

More than the soul is airborne on this late-summer night's flight. A half-dozen bodies are along for the ride.

"CLEAR!" yells veteran chopper pilot Rich Macahan just before this bubble with blades departs terra firma, slowly rising and hovering over the helipad, weaving left and right to find its flying footing before tilting forward and ascending into the Vegas night.

The 15-minute glide above the glittering Strip recasts this global destination as a shiny toy city. It's one of several evening excursions by Stars and Stripes Air Tours, their clientele largely tourists getting high in the evening air, rather than the hotel bar. But even though a family from Barcelona just touched down, this is an all-local liftoff -- five Las Vegans and Macahan, dominating by night the town that tames them by day.

"I've had people propose onboard, I've had people get married in the aircraft with a preacher right over the city," Macahan recalls.

If it's an impulse I-Do moment, at least the couple can find witnesses on the fly. But they should resist a high-altitude honeymoon. This isn't the Mile High Club.

"Every once in a while, someone gets queasy, but very, very few," says Stars and Stripes owner Steve Trenk. (He's referring to flying, not marrying ... we think.) "Everybody gets a little wowed flying over the Strip," he says about the after-dark jaunts taking off from the company's newly opened North Las Vegas facility, the area's only off-airport heliport.

The new site is a sister complex to the Stars and Stripes headquarters at the Boulder City Airport, where helicopter/Cessna airplane tours range from four hours to overnight stays, with flybys over Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam and the grandpappy of Southwest sightseeing stops, the Grand Canyon, where you can descend into its stunning depths or opt for the Skywalk's aerial view.

Prepare to spend by the hundreds to fly past these wonders.

Because "A Helicopter Ride to the Grand Canyon" doesn't quite capture the romanticism of the journey, tours are lent monikers befitting the space shuttle, such as "Explorer" and "Adventurer," or the poetic "Five-Star Sunset" and "Above and Beyond."

But the Strip trip -- priced at $100 for adults and $80 for children, plus fuel charges -- is a quick ride with slick sights of the neon playpen where the world comes to wahoo it up the wazoo. And you can sip (or guzzle) pre-takeoff champagne to quell any vestiges of vertigo you think might afflict you post-flight. Relax, you're not the one driving the rotund aircraft that looks like a steel bird with a weight problem. Speaking of which ...

"We do have to weigh people," says passenger service attendant Ryan Murphy, required to master the art of don't-worry-we-don't-think-you're-fat diplomacy. "The ladies don't seem to like it. A lot of times we get people who don't know their weight, so we've gotten pretty good at judging."

Or, as Trenk points out: "We tend to add a fudge factor -- about 10 pounds."

In fact, the choppers can carry up to six people at 300 pounds apiece (plus a somewhat slimmer pilot). The weight checks are necessary mostly for seating passengers to balance both sides of the bird. But be sure to wrap up private business before boarding because ... "we've had people ask if there are bathrooms on the helicopter."

Murphy is serious when he says this ... seriously.

Once airborne, with the pilot providing narration via headsets, hometown Vegas and "Vegas, Baby!" seem to occupy the same space, Walker Furniture visible on the right, the Four Queens peeking into view on the left, while the moon, appearing a mere touchdown pass away, chills out behind passing clouds. Looming up ahead, the Stratosphere plays doorman to the Strip, rippling out to reveal a city sparkling with bling.

"It's really fun being up there in this tiny bubble," says a now-earthbound Olwen Zarlengo after extracting herself from said bubble with friend Edwina Carabajal, who's logged a few more airborne hours as an American Airlines flight attendant.

"I see (the Strip) all the time, I've been in the cockpit, and the view you get from the cockpit is similar to what we got tonight," Carabajal says. "When you're a passenger on an airplane you really are blocked on one side from the kind of view we had tonight. The forward view is really exciting."

So ends a late-summer night's flight, as a voice from somewhere in the semidarkness poses a compelling question.

"Any champagne left?"

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.