The only real variable
Every other question about flying here has a small answer. This one does not. Twenty minutes, thirty-five or an hour is the single choice that decides what you see, what you pay, and how likely the flight is to go at all. The four operators are interchangeable; the lengths are not. Here is exactly what each one buys, minute by minute.
Quick answer
The short answer. Twenty-five minutes for a first flight. Thirty-five if you also want Fox Glacier. An hour if you want to cross the Main Divide to Aoraki Mount Cook and land twice. Below twenty-five you are mostly buying the climb out of the valley and the descent back into it; above an hour you are buying more of the same thing.
The arithmetic nobody prints
Nine minutes of every flight are the same nine minutes. Everything else is choice.
Every flight out of Franz Josef starts in the same place, at about a hundred and fifty metres above sea level, and every flight has to climb to somewhere between fifteen hundred and twenty-two hundred metres to reach a landing site. That climb takes four or five minutes in a loaded machine. Coming down takes about four.
Subtract that from the ticket and a twenty-minute flight has roughly eleven minutes over ice, of which several are spent positioning for the landing. A twenty-five minute flight has about sixteen. That is not a five-minute difference — it is a forty per cent increase in the part of the flight you came for, for six dollars.
Beyond thirty-five minutes the arithmetic changes character. The fixed nine minutes are already paid for, so every extra minute is a minute over the ice. This is why the jump from twenty to twenty-five is the best value on the whole price list, and why the jump from sixty to ninety is the worst.
Every trip, current fare
The full list of twelve flights, sorted by price, with cost per hour. Note how little the per-hour figure moves: the length is not a quality tier, it is a quantity.
| Flight | Time in the air | Price | Landings | Cost per hour | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20-Minute Snow LandingThe cheapest way onto the ice | 20 min | $213 | One, on snow | $639.00 | 4.9 · 56 |
| 25-Minute Snow LandingTwenty-five minutes, quieter operator | 25 min | $213 | One, on snow | $511.20 | 4.9 · 7 |
| 25-Minute Alpine LandingThe most-reviewed flight in the village | 25 min | $219 | One, on the ice | $525.60 | 4.8 · 693 |
| 30 Minutes: Franz Josef & TasmanFranz Josef and Aoraki in half an hour | 30 min | $221 | One, on snow | $442.00 | 4.8 · 84 |
| 30 Minutes: Fox & Franz JosefFox and Franz Josef in thirty minutes | 30 min | $254 | One, on snow | $508.00 | 4.9 · 152 |
| 35 Minutes with Snow LandingTwo glaciers and a snow landing | 35 min | $268 | One, on snow | $459.43 | 4.7 · 402 |
| 35 Minutes over Two GlaciersThe upgrade most people end up taking | 35 min | $274 | One, on the névé | $469.71 | 4.9 · 527 |
| 40-Minute Grand TourForty minutes and a wider circuit | 40 min | $340 | One, on snow | $510.00 | 4.4 · 21 |
| 45 Minutes, Three GlaciersThree glaciers and a high landing | 45 min | $384 | One, high on the névé | $512.00 | 4.8 · 164 |
| Shackleton 50-Minute FlightWhisky poured over glacier ice | 50 min | $440 | One, with a glass | $528.00 | 5.0 · 2 |
| One Hour, Four GlaciersFour glaciers, two landings, one hour | 1 h | $495 | Two | $495.00 | 4.8 · 30 |
| The Grand Adventure, 90 MinutesNinety minutes, the longest there is | 1.5 h | $827 | Two, longer | $551.33 | 5.0 · 1 |
Minute by minute
Written for a twenty-five minute flight; longer flights extend the middle section, not the ends.
Lift off from the pad, nose down, and the first thing under you is the Waiho riverbed: a grey braided flood plain far too wide for the water in it. That width is the clue to what the glacier used to do.
Rainforest on both sides going past faster than it should, the valley walls closing in, and the machine climbing hard. This is the part that makes people grip the seat, and it is over quickly.
The ground stops being ground. The icefall arrives as a wall of blue-white blocks the size of houses, split by crevasses with light in the bottom of them. Nobody talks during this part.
Above the icefall the glacier flattens into a vast white basin ringed by peaks. From here you can see how the thing works: snow collects up here and grinds its way down there.
A circuit of the site, a shutdown, and the silence. Ten minutes out of the machine, boots on snow, and the valley you flew up laid out below you.
Back down the same valley, faster, with the rainforest coming up to meet you and the village appearing suddenly around a corner.
Once you have a length in mind, the next question is which of the twelve flights sells it best.
The best flight, decided→The long ones
There are three good reasons to book an hour, and one bad one.
Good: you want Aoraki Mount Cook. Nothing under thirty minutes crosses the Main Divide. The one-hour flight goes over it, past the Tasman Glacier — New Zealand’s longest — and gives you the highest mountain in the country as a subject rather than a silhouette.
Good: you want two landings. The second site is usually somewhere quite different from the first, and the change of view is the strongest argument for the hour.
Good: you are photographing seriously. More time means more chances at light, and the hour-long flights carry fewer passengers per departure on most operators.
Bad: you assume longer means better. It does not, particularly on a first flight. The transformation happens in the first fifteen minutes. If this is your only day and the weather is marginal, a twenty-five minute flight that actually leaves beats a ninety-minute one that is stood down.
Book direct
Twenty minutes, twenty-five, thirty-five and a full hour.
★ 4.9 · 56 reviews
★ 4.8 · 693 reviews
★ 4.9 · 527 reviews
★ 4.8 · 30 reviews
Common questions
Twenty-five minutes for a first flight. It is the shortest length that lands on the ice itself and costs six dollars more than the twenty-minute option. Take thirty-five if you also want Fox Glacier, and an hour if you want to cross the Main Divide to Aoraki Mount Cook.
Yes, for a first flight on a fixed budget. About eleven of those twenty minutes are spent over ice, the rest climbing and descending, and it still includes a landing. It is a real flight, not a taster.
Cost per hour is nearly flat from twenty minutes to ninety, so a longer flight is not a worse deal. It simply costs more in total. The value question is how much country you want to see, not how much you pay per minute.
Four or five minutes up and about four back down, on every flight regardless of length. That fixed nine minutes is why the step from twenty to twenty-five minutes adds roughly forty per cent to the time actually spent over ice.
In practice yes, because it needs a longer window of good conditions and often crosses the Main Divide, where the weather can be entirely different. On a one-night stay a shorter flight has better odds of leaving the ground.
Twenty-five minutes, with 693 reviews at 4.8, followed by thirty-five minutes at 4.9 across 527. Between them they account for more than half of all the reviews written about flying here.
Go deeper
Twelve helicopter flights out of one village, from twenty minutes to ninety.
PricesTwelve flights priced per person and per minute, and where the money actually goes.
VerdictTwelve flights ranked for one decision, with a straight answer at the end.
LandingsWhich flights actually put the machine down, and what the difference is.
Which oneTwo glaciers, twenty-five minutes apart, and the flights that show you both.
WeatherHow often flights are stood down here, and how to build a trip around it.
