Papillon runs two Grand Canyon tours that land at the bottom, and on paper they read like the same trip twice. Both fly the EC-130 EcoStar, both give you roughly 70 minutes in the air, both set down on the canyon floor for champagne and a picnic. What separates them is the two ends of the day: where you take off from, and what you fly over on the way home. They're ordered here by how far you travel before the rotors start.
King of Canyons: takes off near the Strip, comes home over it
King of Canyons picks you up from your hotel by shuttle and flies out of a terminal near the Strip, so the ground leg is as short as this kind of trip gets. The route crosses Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, drops into the canyon on Hualapai tribal land, and gives you about 30 minutes on the floor beside the Colorado River, where the champagne and the picnic are served under a ramada, the traditional Hualapai shelter. Then the part that decides it for a lot of people: the flight back crosses the Las Vegas Strip instead of retracing the way it came. Book this one if you want the canyon and the skyline inside the same flight.
Departs: a helicopter terminal near the Las Vegas Strip, with shuttle pickup from your hotel. Format: EcoStar helicopter, around 70 minutes of air time, canyon-floor landing with a champagne toast and picnic. Highlight: a Las Vegas Strip flyover on the return leg.
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Grand Celebration: the whole flight pointed at the canyon
Grand Celebration works the other way round. The shuttle runs you out to Papillon's own terminal in Boulder City first, around half an hour southeast of the Strip, so you're already at the edge of Lake Mead before you board. That's the trade in one line: a longer drive at the front buys a flight that spends all of its time on what you came for, over the dam, the Black Mountains, extinct volcanoes, Grapevine Mesa and the Grand Wash Cliffs, before the descent and the picnic. The return goes back to Boulder City rather than over the city. There's also a sunset departure, which puts the champagne on the canyon floor at the best hour of the day.
Departs: Papillon's Boulder City terminal, with round-trip shuttle from your hotel. Format: EC-130 EcoStar, around 70 minutes of air time, canyon-floor landing with a champagne picnic. Highlight: a sunset departure option.
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Pick by what you want out of the flight
Skyline from the air, shortest possible time in a shuttle: King of Canyons. Every minute of the flight aimed at the canyon, or the sunset version of it: Grand Celebration. One thing worth raising when you book rather than at the terminal is that Papillon balances the aircraft by seat, so a guest over 300 pounds needs the adjacent seat held, charged at a reduced rate at check-in. That's a far easier conversation on the phone than in the queue with your group waiting. If you'd rather stay airborne the whole time and skip the landing, we weighed an air-only canyon flight against a desert off-road day in our guide to helicopter or RZR half-day trips, and the Maverick fleet covers the other operator flying this same stretch of canyon.
