Guest posts

Helicopter Tour will consider guest writing that adds a viewpoint we cannot honestly claim as staff experience: a photographer’s notes on shooting through perspex, a passenger’s account of a weather delay handled well, a maintenance engineer writing in a personal capacity about why walk-arounds exist.

We will not consider operator advertorial, “best of” listicles, or anything that invents fares, safety statistics or medical claims.

House rules

• Name places accurately and defer to park and CASA primary sources.
• No ranking of named operators.
• No invented dialogue.
• Images need licences we can publish; we prefer our credited Wikimedia set unless you hold the rights.
• We edit. By pitching, you agree we may fact-check and cut.

Pitch through contact with “Guest contribution”. Published guest pieces are labelled.

If you would rather pay for a labelled listing, that is a different product: advertise.

What a good pitch looks like

Two paragraphs, a proposed headline, the sources you would cite, and a statement of any operator relationship. If you fly for a company, say so. We may still run a first-person piece; we will not run it as if it were a mystery.

What happens after you send it

We check facts against CASA, park managers, and the rest of our source list. We cut adjectives. We add the guest label. We may hold a piece until a season changes. Silence for a few business days is normal; this is not a magazine with a news desk.

Rights

By pitching you offer us a licence to edit and to publish on helicoptertour.com.au. If we cannot agree on facts, we will not publish. We do not pay a standard freelance rate on unsolicited pitches unless we have written that down first.

Nearby

Editorial policy, advertise for money, contact for the form. Do not use guest posts to sneak a ranking of named operators past the guides.

We will edit your favourite sentence

If it cannot survive a CASA or park check, it goes. If that is unacceptable, advertise instead, labelled, on advertise. Guest posts are not a side door for rankings.

Tone we will not publish

‘Top ten chopper rides you will not believe.’ Operator advertorial with a first-person lipstick. Medical claims. Invented fares. Anything that treats Country as a filter. Anything that treats CASA as optional.

Tone we might publish: a photographer’s argument with perspex. A passenger’s account of a cancellation handled well. An engineer’s personal explanation of a walk-around, without naming employers if they cannot. Pitch that.

House voice versus your voice

We will keep your first-person where it is honest. We will not keep a ranking. We will not keep a medical claim. We will not keep an undeclared operator wage. Pitch two paragraphs, sources, and conflicts via contact. Expect edits. Expect the guest label. Expect silence for a few business days. This hub exists so heritage ‘advertise’ junk is not your only path; it also exists so advertorial cannot wear a flannel shirt and call itself memoir.

Field notes for people who book once

Treat this page as a briefing you can reread the night before money moves. Official sources still win if they disagree with a sentence we wrote last season: CASA for scenic air-transport rules, ATSB for public investigations, BOM for aviation weather, the park or marine-park manager for the ground, the ACCC for consumer-guarantee language. Operators win on the live AOC, the live minutes, and the live no-go.

Write four lines in your notes app: airborne minutes, named landmarks or landing, private or shared, AOC holder. If you cannot write those four, you are still shopping adjectives. Prices, which we will not invent, only make sense after the four lines. Weather slack is a fifth line that saves more holidays than a discount code.

On the day, the passenger job is small on purpose. Honest mass. Briefing. Walk when waved. Seat as assigned. Headset. Stay until waved off. Children hold hands. Nothing loose on the pad. No argument with a tail rotor or a cloud cap. If you freeze, say so. If you feel sick, say so. If the desk cancels, eat breakfast and use the clause you copied.

After you land, the place is still a park, a harbour, a marine park, or someone’s farm. World Heritage logos are conservation listings, not stunt permits. Walk where walking is the respectful way. Hydrate if the rest of the day is hot. Do not sprint to a restaurant you booked six minutes after a Southern Ocean slot. That is the whole method, from guest-posts back to the home page and the FAQ.

Pitch with conflicts declared. We will cut rankings. We will keep the guest label. If you fly for a company, say so in the first paragraph of the pitch so we never have to discover the wage after publication.