Papillon Reviews 32

Our pilot may be qualified to fly, but beyond that, not personable or informative at all. Nick never talked to us or told us what to look for or what we were looking at. We were all wondering if our headsets were working!! But they were! Lot of money for a fly-by. We heard that the other pilots were wonderful. Do yourself a favor. Don't fly with Nick.

Unfortunately, our experience aligns with several others. Often times, only people frustrated with something will bother to write a negative review, but those with a positive (or expected) experience will not write a review. So it always tends to be skewed and you have to take reviews with a grain of salt, so I was hopeful that would be the case for me and we wouldn't experience the problems that others have.

Just as several others have mentioned here, our flight was cancelled the day of, after we arrived. We booked SEVEN months in advance, paid in full ~ $1200 for family of four. We arrive 30 minutes prior as instructed. They tell us, sorry, we have mechanical issues, so you are cancelled. They say, we tried to call you (we received no call because, guess what, cell service is not the best around the south rim of the grand canyon...). We said, we have seen at least 4 helicopters flying, how about canceling someone else, how do you select? Did everybody else here book 7+ months ago? Who is prioritized? The reality is they overbooked, and because we paid 7 months previous, we paid less (I looked, their prices went up since we had booked). So I guess we were the easy choice to cancel...

They offered to rebook the next day, yet they know that nearly nobody can accomodate this, so it is a hollow offer where they know they can "do their part to try to rectify", but also know that nearly everybody would then just cancel, and the problem takes care of itself. Great business model...

Everybody that is going to book a helicopter trip over the grand canyon is there on vacation, and nobody is staying anywhere near grand canyon village or the location of this airport. It is an hour drive just from Williams and the main road, one way. Anyone who books this is driving in from Sedona or Vegas or Phoenix for a half/one day trip, and vacation days/time is precious. Its not as though you can just go do something else nearby and wait until the next day... We had one window of time planned, and the time of this flight was it. I suppose that is why they do not really care about customer service, or screwing someone last minute. Its not like they are planning for repeat customers really...

Kids were beyond disappointed. The build-up and excitement, only to be completely let down last minute. They cried as we were walking out and leaving because the talk of the helicopter ride was happening for months prior.

And now to the refund. The girl at the counter said the refund would take 7-10 days. Ok, thats typical, whatever. 12 days goes by, no refund. E-mail and call. They respond and say that, because its been more then 6 months, we cannot refund back to your card. We can either ACH (and attached a form) or send a check. I respond to tell then to send a check. Who in their right mind is going to provide their bank account number and routing number into a microsoft word file and e-mail it back?

Fast forward ~ 21 days. Still no check. So send another e-mail (haven't called yet because that is a whole other experience...). I receive and e-mail back, not a response to my e-mail, but a carbon copy of the first one sent 9 days prior saying I can use ACH or check. Um, huh?

So here we are now, still no refund.

Fortunately, since we were heading to Vegas that day (was supposed to be right after our helicopter flight), we booked with Maverick for a helicopter flight over Las Vegas the next day. $450 for family of four, and the experience was excellent all around. I'd recommend Maverick, and avoid this company.

ZERO STARS.

We prepaid for this helicopter tour and drove an hour to get there on our last day in town. Ten minutes before we were supposed to board, they said we would not fit on the helicopter and sent us home.

They offered to “reschedule,” which wasn’t helpful since this was our last day visiting. A heads-up earlier in the day would have saved us from wasting our last day traveling over an hour back and forth and a lot of disappointment.

This is completely unacceptable. Extremely frustrating experience and a huge waste of our limited vacation time. I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

I don’t recommend this company as they made sure I do not receive picture of the time I was there. I sent so many emails and they ended up
not responding me. Yet you not allowed to take pictures with your camera. Their ignorance is so high to what a client says and requests

We had a fabulous experience on our celebration tour. Our pilot Matthew was brilliant - knowledgable, reassuring to a nervous first-time passenger and super helpful. Would recommend!

We've had a great experience today with our Pilot Ramon!! Really a great guy who learned us a lot about the Grand Canyon, he made us feel very welcome and comfortable in the helicopter 😁

Very disappointed with the flight process.
Reserved months in advance and could not get a front seat. Spouse had to sit in the back, view obstructed right side (unhappy). As we were told we could not get a front seat we requested a refund before the flight, they said that was not possible, didn't provide an explanation. They claimed it is based on weight distribution but this does not make sense, appears to be an excuse given to unhappy passengers. Could be a marketing strategy, i.e. persons who have reserved in advance are placed in the back seats and persons showing up requesting a front seat given priority to make the sale. Should allow passengers to book seats in advance, in this way no bad surprises at flight time. Passengers could provide weight etc..during the booking and would be able to book the date and time to get the seat they want.

My husband and I had a helicopter trip from Vegas to Grand Canyon on 21-st October 2024 with pilot Mike. I was so surprised my first helicopter trip was so pleasant, exciting and interesting by itself and enriched with pilot’s explanation to every question about the places we were flying over. The topics were about geography, history, nature and wildlife. We were so lucky having such intelligent and knowledgeable guide and experienced pilot in one person!
We would like to thank him once again!

Mr. & Mrs. Roy Taylor
(Great Britain)

One star because we had a very nice pilot and she gave us very nice views of the west rim. We requested for front seats but they didnt give us so we were watching mainly the back of others heads during the flight. We were on our honeymoon and they completely ruined it. We begged to change to other flights but the stuff was totally rude and they just told us that cost is non refundable. They only want your money. We also had 30 minutes delay on the flight.

Other than that it was a nice experience but I don't recommend them for your trip. Try with other better companies.

We had booked a helicopter tour with Papillon. After Checking in, we were informed that we have to fly in two separate helicopters. We are a family with a16 year old daughter, and we booked the tickes months in advance. We accepted because we want ti have this experience. However, we were then told that we would not only fly in different helicopters, we would also be landing in different locations. This is outrageous an the staff was also unfriendly and unhelpful. We decided not to fly in the end and lose this experience and a half Day

Spent half a day of our valuable Las Vegas holiday on an abortive minibus trip to the base with the helicopter ride cancelled because weather too hot… it was cancelled yesterday as well and so they knew it was going to be cancelled today as the weather the same and so could have called us to cancel…

Don’t pay for the photograph!!! They never send it by email and ignore all emails!!! TERRIBLE AND DAYLIGHT ROBBERY

Be careful before booking.

Hidden fees for special seats in the helicopter +60$ are needed, might be you do not sit at a place with a window.

We switched and booked a flight with the airplane:
- first time 30 min before the flight we are kicked out based on that they must use a smaller airplane
- second time nearly 1 hour before the the flight we get kicked out based on that a group of people was added and no seat was available for us
- third time the plain was overbooked, they called it a „mistake“
- fourth time, we booked a flight for the next morning and they mentioned there are enough seats. 30 min. before the flight we get informed that the airplane is fully booked.
We did not get any hint from them on the mobile phone.

Be careful, you will loose a lot of time to get there.

What a joke company standards should be top notch without lies and promises
Luis the hiring manager is a disgrace does not like to get back to actual people looking for employment

How can Papillon Helicopter Tours be reviewed because they do not fulfill their advertised offer.

The scenery is as you would expect STUNNING. It was a terrific experience from a helicopter and then to land but that is where it ends.

Champagne and light picnic refreshments were included in the 30 minute stop. I think this was a joke!

The champagne was clearly sparkling wine and had never seen France. This company have the buying power to be able to negotiate a good deal on proper champagne.

The light picnic refreshments was not even a play on the words!

The basket contained a fruit chew, a bag of fudge biscuits, a baby bel and a breakfast granola bar. This is not a light refreshment for an adult spending over £400 each.

The company land often enough they could have someone stationed there during the working day laying a table for each landing of Hors d'Oeuvres. This was not something for the company to save money on.

Very disappointing.

The company state there is a fuel charge of $30 per person due to increased fuel. World fuel prices have decreased yet they have the audacity to still charge this.

A photograph is taken by the helicopter before take off. Great you think, but then they want $25 for a copy in a paper wallet marketing their company.

The pilot was friendly and knowledgeable with a good taste in music but he then pimped himself for a gratuity. He was doing his job. I’ve never been asked to tip the pilot on American Airlines!

So I can safely say the company did not satisfy my expectations.

After looking around at various websites that offer such activities, we got in the car and drove there. When we arrived, we were able to book a trip 20 minutes before departure. Actually for 20 minutes, but they made us happy with a 45 minute helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was a great experience. Thank you! I will recommend everyone to do that.

Had a great trip. Had read reviews and was worried about wait times at Grand Canyon so we took the 08:00 trip with hotel pickup at 06:15

Pickup was on time and flight took off a few mins late at 08:10. Pilots were chatty and great. Had 2 hours at Grand Canyon. Plenty of time as we’re no queues at that time for skywalk or anything else.

Reservations guy told us that you couldn’t but food or drink on trip and you’re not allowed backpack on helicopter so we stuffed food and drink in pockets and made uncomfortable trip. However you can buy food and drink at boulder base and at Grand Canyon so a little more/better advice on that front would be good. Also, trip only takes a few hours so not a huge issue anyway, especially food.

Really good trip but recommend going early as loads of busses arriving at canyon as we were leaving so I’m sure queues would have been much worse and risk you seeing everything. Also would recommend try upgrade to front seats. We were in back but up front looked awesome

Wow what an amazing experience me and my wife booked the grand celebration package and it didn't disapoint, the views were amazing and once we landed for our champagne picnic at the bottom of the canyon it provided us with some fantastic photo opportunities but the highlight of the whole trip was Derek our pilot who made the trip fun and informative, also taking photos of us when down in the canyon, would definitely recommend when visiting the area😁

Please do not make the mistake we made and book tours with this sorry excuse for a company!!

We had booked well in advance for the flight and tour of the Grand Canyon. As advised by Papillon, we rang them to confirm our pick up 2 days before we had scheduled to go to the Grand Canyon for our first wedding anniversary. We were unfortunately informed (only when we rang them 2 days before the flight it should be noted) that the airplane would be in for maintenance that day and our trip was cancelled.

They initially said they had no other availability whilst we were in Vegas and therefore we requested a refund to try and book another tour instead. We were shocked to be informed that refunds take up to 2 weeks. This means they had $800 of our money and due to them not informing us, we couldn’t even book with a different company. This was just the beginning…

Begrudgingly, we continued with the refund. The extremely rude employee didn’t just ask for our debit card number to process the refund though but also the expiry date and the SECURITY CODE. When I questioned why on earth they would need those personal, security details to give us our own money back she shouted down the phone “OH. MY. GOD. THIS GUY THINKS I’M TRYING TO STEAL HIS MONEY!” Which was actually a genuine concern of mine given the details she had asked for. She then immediately put me on hold and then through to other member of their team.

Amazingly (or so we thought), this new employee magically found us a place on a flight the day after the original one.

Just 12 hours before we were supposed to leave, we got an email saying again that this second flight had also been cancelled… Again the short notice meant we were totally unable to book through a different provider and they still had a huge amount of our money. We believe this flight never actually existed and it was a ploy to pacify us.

We rang to get our refund sorted and whilst apparently being connected to a senior member of their team, they put us on hold with a looping automated message - forcing us to hang up.

We rang back (again, which being from England was costing us a lot in overseas phone calls) and the employee guaranteed us that a manager was working on our case and would ring us back within 1 hour (this would have been 11:30am). They also requested that we sent an email explaining the problems we had encountered.

We did not hear back from them (shock)… I had to send a follow up email the day after asking what was happening. Eventually, over 24hrs after they said they would get back to us, they offered us a chance of a free Vegas Night Flight. Brilliant you think? Not at all. They knew we left Vegas the day their insincere offer came through and therefore we would never be able to take this flight - hence why they didn’t reply with this offer when they had guaranteed us they would. Total joke and a total disgrace.

To top it all off, our refund actually has us $40 down due to currency fluctuations. So we paid $40 + more in phone calls to get cancelled on twice and ruin our honeymoon and anniversary. Not to mention the time we wasted dealing with their issues and rude employees. We are devastated.

DO NOT BOOK WITH THIS COMPANY!!! Shocking service, disgusting organisation and disgraceful customer care.

AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!

Shambolic company,booked sunset tour with landing and champagne picnic..pilot forgot the champagne and picnic on our helicopter and we were sat with nothing for an hour in Grand Canyon whilst he helped with the other tours from their company. As you weren’t allowed to take a drink with you and we’d not eaten before it was a very hot and thirsty hour!! Final straw was being offered the other people’s leftovers. As I’d paid almost £1200 for the tour I found this insulting. Offered us champagne on return?? Not worth the money, staff are terrible and customer service is worse. Far better helicopter tours in vegas, do not use these!!