Airline Background

Metro Helicopters is a virtual airline, whose members participate in highly realistic, simulated helicopter flight operations, using Microsoft Flight Simulator and the worldwide simulated air traffic control network known as VATSIM.

Metro's virtual headquarters and primary base of operations is at Teterboro Airport (KTEB), located in New Jersey, a few miles west of Manhattan. Metro currently operates a secondary base at the historic Floyd Bennett Field (NY22 or "CGAS" in Flight Simulator), in Brooklyn, NY. This base is used for MetroLife medevac flight operations. In 2007, Metro also expanded to the West Coast, and opened a major facility at Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), located north of Los Angeles.

Metro Helicopters was founded in November of 2000, by Russ Downing, a highly experienced real world pilot and flight simulation enthusiast. Metro´s Co-Founder was Adrian Cholmondelay. Rob Reno took over as Executive Director and CEO in June of 2010 from Wayne Smith who ran Metro Helicopters VA for several years. Rob came to Metro Helicopters With vast area of both flight and mechanical knowledge of helicopters.

Metro has been steadily growing again. As of June 1st 2010 Metro has 18 active pilots, flying various aircraft.Several additional members holding positions as livery and scenery designers. Mark Swartz is Metro Helicopters Membership Director. Jordan Shechtman is Metro's Director of Training. Some of Metro´s members are real world pilots, or are student pilots. Most Metro pilots have considerable flight experience on the VATSIM network, and several have air traffic controller experience as well.

What Makes Metro Unique

Metro´s simulated operations include air taxi, site-seeing and charter flights for executive transport, Homeland Security, aerial photography/survey and electronic news gathering. Air taxi flights include passenger transfers from other virtual airlines. Metro pilots follow operational procedures developed by a real world, medevac helicopter pilot and Certified Flight Instructor. Metro pilots advance to positions of greater responsibility by taking flight tests. See the Training section of our web site for additional information.

Metro flies a wide variety of aircraft bearing distinctive Metro liveries, including the award winning Liberty design first flown on Metro aircraft in 2001. Metro's fleet currently includes: Bell 206B III,Bell 206L Longranger III, Bell 412, Eurocopter AS-350 , Eurocopter AS-365, Eurocopter EC-120, Eurocopter EC-130, Eurocopter EC-135, And the Sikorsky S-76A Spirit. Aircraft liveries are only available for download by Metro pilots.

Metro's talented scenery designers have constructed custom detailed scenery including: major New York area heliports, commercial, hospital, private helipads, helipads on ships and pleasure boats, and simulated accident site scenery for MS Flight Simulator 2004. This scenery is available for download on Metro's web site, in support of Metro Helicopters missions in the New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles Metropolitan areas. This free scenery has also been made available to the helicopter flight simulation community.

Metro supports our alliance partner Virtual Flight Options (VFO), a regional virtual airline, with connecting flights from KTEB, KEWR, KJFK, and KLGA to New York City heliports, and other locations. Coordinated flight scheduling and connections provides an additional level of challenge and realism for pilots of both virtual airlines. Operations are jointly coordinated via a special discuss forum section on the VFO web site. Pilots can schedule a flight connection in advance, and also coordinate inter-airline operations on a VFO operated voice channel.

The MetroLife division provides simulated medevac and critical care patient transport in the New York and Los Angeles areas. MetroLife pilots are specially qualified Metro Senior Command Pilots. They fly the Sikorsky S-76, Bell 412, and Eurocopter EC-135 and AS-365 in support of medevac operations.