The Grand Canyon National Park is huge. The best way to explore it is by taking an aerial tour. You can tour by chopper or plane and if you follow the advice below, you can find a fun tour at a great price.

You can take air tours to the West Rim or the South Rim. Las Vegas is near the West Rim while cities in Arizona such as Flagstaff, Williams, Sedona, and Phoenix are near the South Rim. So figure out what city you will start from and choose your tour from there.

West Rim

Las Vegas sits about 120 miles away from the West Rim. Helicopters can make it there in 45 minutes and airplanes can do it in 30 minutes. There are two kinds of flights. They are air and landing. The landing tours come with lots of fun add-ons so they cost more.

The tours fly over Lake Mead and Hoover Dam en route to the National Park. Helicopter landing tours go to the top and the bottom. The airplanes don't fly to the canyon floor, but if you take a plane tour, you can hop on a chopper once you get to the rim so you can descend to the canyon floor. One of the popular tours is one that lands on the canyon floor where you are treated to a fun Champagne brunch. If you are adventurous, you can choose the popular tour that lands on top of the rim so you can walk on the famous glass Skywalk.

If you want to descend to the canyon floor in a chopper, you'll have to choose one of the tours to the West Rim that flies out of Vegas. The National Park service does not allow flying below the rim at the South Rim. Further, there are no flights that connect the rims. If you are at the West and want to do the South (and vice versa), you'll have to arrange transportation.

South Rim

Things are a bit different as this rim. The helicopter tours are mostly air-only and they are thirty or fifty minutes in length. Both tours fly over to the North Rim and the longer one also flies over to the eastern edge of the Park. The longer tour is pretty amazing because you see a great deal of the Park.

The South Rim does have a landing tour, but nothing like what you'll find at the West. This tour comes with a rim-to-rim flight over the canyon and then a Jeep tour that includes a view of the sun setting over the canyon. It is a fantastic experience and well worth the expense.

There is just one choice when it comes to airplane tours of the South Rim. It is a 50-minute tour that flies along the same route as the 50-minute helicopter tour. The difference between the two is price. Airplane tours cost less. But there is a trade-off. The planes carry 19 passengers and fly at a higher altitude. Helicopters only carry six passengers and they fly much lower and closer to the scenery.

Plan Your Tour

Hopefully, you understand more about taking a flight over the Grand Canyon. The key is knowing whether to start your flight from an airfield in Las Vegas or the airport in Tusayan, Arizona. Then decide if you want to fly over the canyon or if you want to land and explore. You'll also need to determine if a chopper or plane is the best aircraft for your trip keeping in mind both are spectacular.