The most common wrong booking
One is $199 for twenty minutes in the air with ten minutes standing on snow. The other is $497 for two and a half hours walking inside the glacier. People book them as though they were the cheap and expensive versions of one thing, and they are not. This page lays out exactly what each one gives you so you buy the day you actually wanted.
Quick answer
The short answer. If you want to see the glacier, take the scenic flight. If you want to be in it, take the heli hike. The flight shows you the whole thing — the icefall, the névé, the Southern Alps — in a way the hike never does, because on the hike you are inside it and cannot see out. They are not substitutes and a lot of people end up booking both.
What the flight gives you
From four hundred feet the glacier makes sense as an object. You can see where the snow collects at the top, where it steepens and shatters into the icefall, and where it thins out into grey rubble at the bottom. You can see the Southern Alps standing behind it and the Tasman Sea in front. On a longer flight you cross the Main Divide and Aoraki Mount Cook is suddenly right there.
None of that is visible from on the ice. On a heli hike you are inside a maze at the scale of a person: walls of ice, corridors between pressure ridges, a horizon about forty metres away. It is magnificent and it tells you nothing about the shape of the glacier.
The flight also lands. Every scenic flight on this site sets down on snow and lets you out for something like ten minutes, rotors stopped. That is enough to stand on a glacier and take the photograph. It is not enough to walk anywhere.
What the hike gives you
The flight is the establishing shot. The hike is the scene.
The features that people describe for years afterwards are all at ground level and most of them are invisible from the air.
The tunnels. Meltwater carves passages through the ice, and where they are stable the guides route through them. Two metres of blue ice overhead, lit from outside. There is no photograph from a helicopter that contains one.
Moulins. Vertical shafts where surface water disappears into the glacier. From above they read as dots. From two metres away they read as something else entirely.
Scale, the other way round. A crevasse you flew over in half a second takes twenty minutes to walk around, and that is when the size of the thing lands.
The silence. Both products have it — the flight when the rotors stop at the landing, the hike for two and a half hours. On the hike it stops being a novelty and becomes the condition you are working in.
Every trip, current fare
Both scenic flights and all three heli hikes in one table, with cost per hour of the whole trip.
| Trip | Duration | Price | On the ice | Cost per hour | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glacier Lookout Guided WalkThe cheapest guided day in the valley | 3 h | $61 | No — viewpoint only | $20.33 | 4.8 · 169 |
| Fox Glacier Half-Day WalkHalf a day in the quieter valley | 3.5 h | $61 | No — valley only | $17.43 | 4.7 · 188 |
| Lake Mapourika KayakMirror water and the whole Main Divide | 3 h | $74 | No | $24.67 | 4.9 · 137 |
| Lake Mapourika Cruise & WalkThe lake without the paddling | 2.5 h | $82 | No | $32.80 | 4.8 · 77 |
| Okarito Kiwi Sanctuary KayakLagoon, rainforest and a kiwi | 4 h | $94 | No | $23.50 | 4.9 · 72 |
| Off-Road Quad Bike TourRuns when the helicopters do not | 2 h | $138 | No | $69.00 | 4.9 · 326 |
| Franz Josef SkydiveThe other way to be above this coast | 3 h | $193 | No | $64.33 | 4.9 · 129 |
| 20-Minute Snow Landing FlightThe glacier from the air, with a landing | 20 min | $199 | Ten minutes on snow | $597.00 | 4.9 · 190 |
| Fox Glacier & Mount Cook FlightFox and Aoraki in thirty-five minutes | 35 min | $268 | Snow landing | $459.43 | 4.5 · 44 |
| 2.5-Hour Heli-HikeThe only way to walk on the glacier | 4–8 h | $497 | 2.5 hours walking | $124.25 | 4.8 · 398 |
| Extended Heli-Hike with LunchA full day on the ice with lunch | 8 h | $857 | About 4 hours walking | $107.12 | 5.0 · 1 |
| Heli-Hike from QueenstownThe heli hike without the drive | 6.5 h | $995 | About 2 hours walking | $153.08 | 4.8 · 28 |
Choosing
Based on what people regret rather than on what sells.
Two and a half hours on the ice is the thing you will describe when you get home. The twenty-minute flight is excellent and it is over before you have adjusted to it.
At $199 it lands on snow, lets you out, and gives you the entire glacier in one frame. It is not a consolation prize.
The aerial shots only exist from the air, and the ground-level blue only exists on the ice. Plenty of people do the flight on one morning and the hike on the next.
Walking in crampons on uneven ice for two hours is not negotiable on a heli hike, and no operator will pretend otherwise. The flight asks nothing of you.
Heli hikes generally set a minimum around eight to ten years. Scenic flights take younger children as long as they have their own seat.
A scenic flight slips through a weather window that will not carry a hike, because the machine does not have to come back for you. On marginal days it is the one that goes.
Want the whole day laid out before you commit five hundred dollars to it?
What actually happens on a heli hike→Book direct
Two flights and two hikes, cheapest first.
★ 4.9 · 190 reviews
★ 4.5 · 44 reviews
★ 4.8 · 398 reviews
★ 5.0 · 1 reviews
Common questions
The heli hike if you want to walk on the glacier and the scenic flight if you want to see it. The flight shows you the shape of the whole glacier and the Southern Alps in twenty minutes; the hike puts you inside it for two and a half hours and shows you tunnels and crevasses that do not exist from the air.
Surprisingly often, yes. They show you almost completely different things, and quite a few people book the flight on one morning and the hike on the next. If you can only do one, do the hike.
It lands on snow, usually on the névé above the icefall or a snowfield beside it, and lets you out for about ten minutes with the rotors stopped. You stand within a few metres of the machine; you do not walk anywhere.
The heli hike, by a clear margin. A flight needs one workable window; a hike needs the weather to hold long enough for the machine to come back for you. Operators fly sightseers on days they will not put walkers on the ice.
Per hour actually spent on the glacier it is about six times cheaper. Whether the total is worth it depends on whether you want to be on the ice or above it — that is genuinely the whole question.
Physically yes, and operators will sell you both, but it is a poor use of a clear morning. If you have two mornings, do one on each and keep the better weather for the hike.
Go deeper
What it is, what it costs, and why there is no way onto the ice without one.
PricesThree heli hikes priced against the scenic flight, and what the money actually buys.
VerdictThree heli hikes compared on time on the ice, group size and what is included.
Hour by hourFrom the boot fitting to the pick-up, in order, with the boring parts left in.
Which oneTwo glaciers, two villages, and which one to put your only clear morning into.
WeatherWhy a hike is grounded more often than a flight, and how to build a trip around it.
