My wife and I have flown on the helicopter and the planes, and above all flying with birds in paradise was our most exciting and informative, you can actually learn to fly the power glider during your flight. My wife and I flow with Paul and Gene and they both were very informative on the flight and Shawn was very helpful getting our flight scheduled. if you have the opportunity to make a flight on the island of Kauai make it with the Birds in paradise crew, they will do their best to give you the flight of a life time. Terry from Texas

Year old thread revived. Obviously most of this was written ages before their recent major crash.

I remember the original article in the Kauai paper about the crash, but I never heard anything else. Did they ever publish how it happened? I know the pilot and passenger were both a kind of banged up, but survived. Is the pilot still with BIP?

Considering there were no fatalities, I guess the parachute fail safe feature in the trikes really works. I would still not hesitate to fly with BIP. Not sure I would try another helo flight.

They don't allow you to take photos. It's totally open, and you can't have anything on you that might fall 6000 feet to the ground! For an extra $85 you can have them mount a camera to the wing, pointed at you, and it will take photos of you during the flight. We did it and got about 100 very good-quality pictures.

We did end up trying them on our visit last winter. 6 of us went - 2 at a time. I am the one most likely to get air-sick, and so I told the pilot that I wanted him to be the one in control of the steering, and that I wanted him to hold as steady as possible, rather than making frequent dips and turns. This worked fine until the very end. He insisted that I at least try steering, just so that I could tell people that I had "flown" the trike. He had me put my hands on the bar, then tipped it one direction explaining how it worked, then tipped the other direction......then I immediately got nauseas, and it was time to land! Coming down did not help with how I was feeling at all! I had taken Bonine, and ginger trips too, ahead of time, but that didn't help at the end. The rest of the ride had been fine. They were very good about taking into consideration what each person told them....my daughter and husband both "held steady" and did not get sick at all. My 3 sons were flying up and down and in and out of valleys, steering for the majority of the 60-minute trip, and they loved it!

I did not hear anything about a crash happening. Can someone tell me what happened?

All of these powered ultralight flights are done under the guise of a "training flight" in order to skirt very complicated FAA requirements under FAR Part 135 for air tour/taxi services. You may read the FAA requirements here:

ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx…

That being said, I believe they are absolutely the best form of flight-seeing on the islands. I've flown over Na Pali on one and I'll be on Maui (and the Big Isle) this coming winter and already have a flight booked on one that operates out of Hana. You simply cannot beat the view! And, yes, I've done helicopter tours over Kauai and Big Isle, too.

I read about the BIP accident a while back. I never saw anything about a follow-up on the story. What I want to know is why the pilot had to deploy the parachute. I certainly am not letting that one incident keep me from flying again because I know that accidents will happen.

As far as photos on the flight, I was able to do so. I have a video slideshow here on TA that includes most of the photos I took. Look at the main Kauai page and check out all videos. If you cannot find it, you may view the same video slideshow here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQMqJgYA7zs

It seems, however, the operator out of Hana does not allow any hand held cameras. He said he had one fly through the prop some time ago and has banned them ever since. So I guess my next flight will be sans camera.

As far as I am aware....the kite was subjected to a down draft from a rotor cloud, and that means the air mass is being pushed toward the planet.

The kite could not power thru that, and many times neither can fixed wing aircraft...

The pilot deployed his chute to try and slow the downward momentum.

That is about all the scoops that I have.

Birds in Paradise, I believe will have 4 kites, and is still flying and staying busy.

I totally agree that micro light flying, hands on, is one heck of a lot more fun than the helos, but helo tours will cover more territory so we have done three micro light flights, as well as three helo cirlce island tours., and one fixed with with AirVentures.

Denny

Denny