Hawai’i: Flying Over A Volcano Feet First

“While visiting Hawaii recently, I became aware of a phrase I’d never heard before. And it’s a real cracker. In the technical vernacular of the seasoned helicopter pilot, a ‘doors-off’ flight isn’t some vanilla compromise where a helicopter’s doors might actually still be somehow attached after take-off but are maybe left open or placed somewhere out of the way. ‘Doors-off’ means what it says. They are taken off, physically removed prior to the flight, not present to be called upon should a passenger at some point decide to totally freak out.

On a recent flight to see Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island, the youngest and most active of all Hawaii’s volcanos, I experienced it firsthand, and once the Paradise Helicopters chopper took off, there was nothing except a substantial downdraft between me and potential oblivion. And to think I paid extra for this privilege.

Thoughts of oblivion were no match for the cascading layers of sensory overload I was about to experience. Flying over the extraordinarily visceral landscape that Kilauea (a Hawaiian word meaning “spewing”) has been patiently building over the past 275,000 years inspires only wonder…”

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