The best helicopter tour in Las Vegas: all 12 ranked honestly

Three things, and the first one is a decision rather than a feature.

The Strip or the canyon. These are different products. Eleven to fifteen minutes over the city, for less than a show ticket, on an evening you were going to spend in Las Vegas anyway. Or two and a half to seven hours in Arizona, for five times the money, which is a day of your holiday. Neither is better. Deciding which you are buying is most of the work.

Whether you get a window. On a helicopter this matters more than almost anything and it is barely mentioned in listings. Every operator weighs passengers and the pilot seats the cabin by weight so the aircraft balances; on a full cabin two people sit in the middle. One listing on this page — the daytime Strip flight at $98 — writes the window into the booking. That is worth the five-dollar difference several times over.

How much evidence stands behind the rating. Three flights here carry more than a thousand ratings each: 2,061, 1,938 and 1,164. After that the numbers drop to 567, 452, 377, 217, 134, 80, 46, 27 and 2. A 5.0 from two people is not evidence, and we say so rather than sorting by score.

First time in Las Vegas, one flight, sensible budget. The daytime Strip flight at $98. Fifteen minutes, a guaranteed window, and the whole outing fits in an evening. If you would rather have the neon, take the night flight at $93 instead and accept whatever seat the scale gives you.

You have half a day and you want the Grand Canyon. The landing tour at $470. Two to two and a half hours door to door, twenty to thirty minutes standing on the canyon floor beside the Colorado River, and 1,164 reviews at 4.9 behind it. It is the best-rated flight on this page and the one people describe years later.

You have three hours and the canyon is non-negotiable. The Skywalk express at $601 is two and a half hours door to door, which is the fastest way to see the Grand Canyon at all from Las Vegas.

You want the whole canyon day. The dual-landings tour at $695 — the floor, a rim plateau and four and a half hours — or the full West Rim day at $517 if you want more time on the ground than in the air.

It is a wedding, an anniversary or a proposal. The wedding package at $1,271 is a private helicopter, a ceremony over the lit Strip and the photographs. It is priced as an occasion, not as sightseeing, and it should be judged that way.

You want something nobody else on your trip did. The Hoover Dam flight at $207. Thirty-five minutes in daylight over 221 metres of concrete in Black Canyon, Lake Mead, and back along the Strip. It is the only listing here that goes there.