Types of Civilian Helicopters: 12 Jobs and the Models That Do Them

Civilian helicopters are easiest to understand by the job they do. There are about a dozen types: air ambulance, police, firefighting, search and rescue, offshore, tour, news, training, private, utility, heavy lift and agricultural.

Each job pulls the design a different way, and the same few models keep turning up across them. The Airbus H125 flies police patrols, tours and mountain work. The Robinson R44 has been the best-selling general aviation helicopter every year since 1999.

Below is every civilian role, the models that actually fly it, and a second way to sort them: by size, from a 1,370-pound trainer to a 42,000-pound flying crane.

Types of civilian helicopters at a glance

1. Air ambulance helicopters

Air ambulances, also called EMS or HEMS helicopters, are the civilian role most people see overhead. They need a cabin that takes a stretcher and a medical crew, and an engine that starts up fast.

The Airbus H135, sold for years as the EC135, dominates the job. A 2013 report credited it with about 25% of the world’s emergency medical flights, and in 2016 half of the EC135s in service were flying EMS.

Its bigger sibling, the H145, carries up to nine passengers and weighs up to 8,400 pounds (3,800 kg) at takeoff. It was developed with Kawasaki from the BK 117, and over 1,600 of the family had been built by mid-2023.

2. Police helicopters

Police helicopters follow suspects, search for missing people and give officers on the ground a view they cannot get any other way. In the US, the workhorse is the light single-engine turbine.

The Los Angeles Police Department shows it. It runs the largest municipal police air unit in the United States. Its 16 helicopters are 7 AS350 B2s, 7 Airbus H125s, 1 Bell 206 and 1 Bell 412, so one Airbus family makes up 14 of the 16.

Twins fly police work too. The Bell 412 flies with the NYPD, the Virginia State Police and the U.S. Park Police, and police forces in Europe use the MD 900 Explorer, whose NOTAR design replaces the tail rotor with air blown through slots in the boom. What police helicopters actually do on a shift is a story of its own.

3. Firefighting helicopters

Firefighting helicopters drop water or retardant from a bucket or a belly tank, and many also carry crews to the fire line. US wildland agencies sort them into three types by seats, water capacity and weight.

The Erickson S-64 Air-Crane is the extreme end of Type 1. Its fixed tank holds 2,650 gallons (10,000 L) and refills through a snorkel in about 45 seconds, and the best known of the fleet is nicknamed “Elvis”.

The Bell 212, a twin-engine civil Huey with 15 seats, is a classic medium. It carries a fire crew in, then works a bucket over the same fire.

4. Search and rescue helicopters

Search and rescue (SAR) helicopters pull people off ships, mountains and the open sea, and the role runs on medium and large twins.

In the UK, search and rescue is a civilian job. Bristow flies 11 Sikorsky S-92s from 10 bases under a government contract, and CHC flies S-92s for the Irish Coast Guard.

For the helicopters that wear uniform full time, see our guide to the types of military helicopters.

5. Offshore helicopters

Offshore helicopters carry workers to oil and gas platforms far out at sea. The flights are long and over water, so the job belongs to big twins; our guide to how far helicopters can fly explains why range matters here.

The Sikorsky S-92 seats 19 passengers and flies for PHI, Bristow and Cougar Helicopters. The Leonardo AW139 has become popular with offshore operators too, and more than 1,200 had been built by July 2024.

Sikorsky’s earlier S-76 was the company’s first helicopter developed for the civilian market, aimed squarely at corporate flying and offshore oil.

6. Tour helicopters

Tour helicopters sell a view, and one model was designed around that job.

The Airbus H130, first sold as the EC130, was designed in close cooperation with tour operators. Blue Hawaiian Helicopters launched it in 2001 on tours of Hawaii and the Grand Canyon, and its enclosed Fenestron tail rotor cuts noise by about 50%.

It seats a pilot and six passengers in the standard layout. The AS350 it was developed from is also a fixture of the sightseeing trade.

7. News and filming helicopters

News helicopters have to get to a story fast and then hold a steady camera over it. The role started in Los Angeles.

In 1958, station KTLA leased a Bell 47G-2 and fitted it with a camera and a video link to its transmitter on Mount Wilson. The KTLA Telecopter was the first TV news helicopter.

The Bell 206 JetRanger later became a favorite for news and traffic reporting. Bell built about 7,300 of the 206 family before production ended in 2017.

8. Training helicopters

Most helicopter pilots learn in something small and cheap to run, and one aircraft dominates the job.

The two-seat Robinson R22 weighs 1,370 pounds (621 kg) at takeoff in its original form and has been widely used as a primary trainer since its 1979 FAA certification. More than 4,800 had been built by 2019.

In the US, flying an R22 or R44 requires a special instructor endorsement under SFAR 73, which covers low rotor RPM, mast bumping and low-G hazards. Training is the first step on the road to the helicopter pilot jobs in every other section of this list.

9. Private and VIP helicopters

At the private end of the market, one model stands out. The four-seat Robinson R44 has been the world’s best-selling general aviation helicopter every year since 1999, with more than 6,866 built through 2023.

Our list of the cheapest helicopters you can buy covers what that end of the market costs. At the other end, executive and head-of-state transport runs on medium twins.

As of 2020, ten countries used the Sikorsky S-76 to carry their heads of state. The AW139 is also sold in VIP and corporate interiors.

10. Utility helicopters

Utility helicopters are the generalists, built to switch between passengers, cargo and an external load from one day to the next. The Airbus H125, still widely known as the AS350 or AStar, is the definitive one.

About 7,200 of the Écureuil family have been built, and the type flies police, tour, EMS and news work as well as utility jobs. Its party trick is altitude: on May 14, 2005, Eurocopter test pilot Didier Delsalle landed an AS350 B3 on the summit of Mount Everest, at 29,030 feet (8,848 m).

The biggest utility fleet in the world is Russian. More than 17,000 Mil Mi-8s have been built, making it the most-produced helicopter ever, and civil versions such as the 24-passenger Mi-8T carry passengers and cargo.

11. Heavy-lift and logging helicopters

Heavy-lift helicopters carry loads on a cable under the aircraft: logs, construction loads, even the top of a tower. Our guides to heavy-lift helicopters and how much a helicopter can lift go deeper on the numbers.

Columbia Helicopters flies eight Boeing-Vertol Model 234s, the civil version of the Chinook, and 14 Model 107-IIs. It bought both type certificates from Boeing in 2006 and uses the fleet for heli-logging, firefighting, construction and oil exploration.

The S-64E Air-Crane lifts up to 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg) and once set the top section of Toronto’s CN Tower in place. The single-seat Kaman K-MAX is a specialist: two intermeshing rotors and no tail rotor let it lift 6,000 pounds (2,722 kg) on the hook at sea level.

12. Agricultural and survey helicopters

Helicopters spray and seed crops, much as crop dusters do, and they patrol pipelines and powerlines. Russia’s Mi-8ATS is a factory agricultural version with a hopper and spray bars.

This is the work the FAA’s restricted category was written for. It covers special purposes only, including crop spraying and seeding, firefighting drops, aerial surveying, pipeline and powerline patrol, and external-load work.

That category is also how ex-military helicopters enter civil service. In 2016, Timberline Helicopters earned a restricted category type certificate for the UH-60A Black Hawk, to fly firefighting, utility line construction and other heavy-lift work.

Civilian helicopters by size and weight

The second way to sort civilian helicopters is by size, and the spread is enormous. The heaviest model on this list weighs more than 30 times as much as the lightest.

Weight also decides the rulebook. The FAA’s normal category, Part 27, covers rotorcraft of 7,000 pounds or less with nine or fewer passenger seats; larger helicopters are certified to the transport category, Part 29, where any helicopter over 20,000 pounds with 10 or more seats must meet the Category A standard.

The R22 at the bottom of the chart runs a Lycoming flat-four piston engine. Our guide to types of helicopter engines explains how that compares with the turbines in larger helicopters.