Helipaddy: Heli Landing Sites

Review by eFreeware

Helipaddy is a directory of helicopter landing sites, published by Helipaddy Ltd and filed under Travel & Local on Google Play. The pitch is straightforward: instead of piecing together landing options from scattered notes, forums and word of mouth, you search one catalog of pads that other pilots and site owners have contributed to.

The appeal is the breadth. The developer puts the total at more than 12,000 landing sites spread across over 120 countries, ranging from luxury hotels and award-winning restaurants to secluded spots. For anyone flying somewhere unfamiliar and needing a place to put down, that kind of starting point has obvious value.

It has been listed since June 2014 and was updated in late September 2025, so the project is long-running rather than new. The download is free, with in-app purchases available and no ads, and a premium membership mentioned for extra features.

Searching for a pad near your destination

The core job is finding somewhere to land. You search around a destination and browse what comes back, then narrow the list with filters until what remains matches the sort of stop you have in mind. Leisure spots feature as heavily as transit stops, judging by the examples given: a French Riviera chateau, an Algarve golf course and a New South Wales vineyard.

What makes a directory like this useful rather than decorative is the detail attached to each entry. The developer describes site information as peer reviewed and kept current by pilots and site owners, with landing guidance and notes on local obstacles included so you can prepare before you arrive. That is the part I would weigh most heavily: a pin on a map is easy, but knowing what is around the approach is what makes a landing realistic.

Photos and reviews from other pilots sit alongside the site details, and you can add your own once you have landed. Favorites can be saved for a return visit or shared with someone else. None of this replaces your own planning, but it shortens the distance between deciding on a region and having a shortlist of viable pads.

Booking, PPR and talking to the owner

Finding a site is only half the task; the other half is permission. Helipaddy lets you contact landing site owners directly from the app to arrange a booking and confirm PPR. For private pads, hotels and restaurants, that conversation is usually the difference between a planned stop and an awkward arrival, so having the contact route built into the same entry you are already reading is the feature I would expect pilots to lean on most.

The developer frames the whole process as taking a few simple taps, which is the kind of claim worth treating as marketing until you have tried it yourself. The intended sequence is search, review the site information, make contact, confirm, then fly. Whether the replies come quickly depends on the owners, not the app.

There is also an events section for heli-friendly gatherings around the world, which is a smaller addition but fits the community angle the developer leans into.

Moving site details into your flight planning

One practical touch is export. Site information can be sent directly to SkyDemon, Garmin Pilot, Runway HD and Foreflight, so you are not retyping coordinates into whatever you plan with. For pilots already committed to one of those tools, that removes a step that is both tedious and easy to get wrong.

The same applies to contributing back. You can upload new heli-friendly sites and aerial points of interest, add photos and share landing tips, which is how a catalog like this grows beyond the places a single team could visit. The value of the directory depends on that loop continuing, and the developer is explicit that pilots and owners are the ones keeping entries up to date.

The most recent update added support for a new pad status, a small change that suggests the site records themselves are still being refined rather than left as they were.

What owners get out of it

Helipaddy is not only for pilots. If you own a helipad or a landing site, you can advertise it, keep its location details current and record landings that take place there. That gives a hotel, restaurant or estate a way to be found by the people who might arrive by air.

There is a condition attached: owners need to sign up through the Helipaddy website rather than handling it inside the app. That is worth knowing before you download, because the app itself will not complete the process for you.

For pilots, the owner side matters indirectly. A directory where sites are claimed and maintained by the people who run them is more likely to reflect what you will actually find on the ground than one assembled from old charts.

Cost, membership and what the free download covers

The app is free to download and carries no ads. In-app purchases are offered, and the developer refers to a premium membership that adds features beyond the standard set.

A 2.4 average across 58 ratings is a modest score, and with only four written reviews there is not much for a newcomer to read into. I would not treat that as a verdict on the data itself either way; it is simply a small sample from a specialist audience.

The install figure, over 10,000, is consistent with a niche tool rather than a mass-market travel app, which is what you would expect for something built around helicopter landings.

The pilot this directory fits

This is a tool for people who fly helicopters and need to land somewhere other than their home base. That includes private owners planning trips, charter and commercial pilots looking for options near a client's destination, and anyone who regularly flies into unfamiliar regions where local knowledge is hard to come by.

It also suits the owner side of the market: hotels, restaurants, estates and private individuals with a usable pad who want to be discoverable. The two groups feed each other, which is the sensible design behind the whole thing.

What it is not is a general travel guide. Everything in it is organized around the question of where a helicopter can land and who to ask, and the destinations listed are there because they accept or accommodate rotorcraft. If that is not the trip you are planning, the catalog will not have much to say to you.

A directory worth having if you fly rotorcraft

Helipaddy does one job and does it at a scale that is hard to match elsewhere: over 12,000 landing sites in more than 120 countries, with owner contacts, landing guidance, pilot reviews and exports into the planning tools many pilots already use. The free download and absence of ads make it easy to try against the regions you actually fly.

The caveats are the ones that come with any community-maintained directory. The quality of an individual entry depends on the pilot or owner who supplied it, and confirming PPR still means contacting the site and waiting for an answer. The premium membership is there if you want more than the standard feature set, though its contents stay general.

If you fly helicopters and plan landings away from home, this is a sensible thing to have on your phone before the next trip. If you own a pad and want it found, the website sign-up is the route in. For everyone else, it is a specialist catalog that will sit unused.

What's new in version 5.5.7

- Added support for new Pad status