The Sky’s the Limit : Travel: Helicopters have become a means for some to rise above gridlock on the way to dine or see ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ see a coastal sunset or offer a proposal of marriage.

It’s not Hollywood, let alone the hot, humid jungle of Vietnam. But when Mark C. Johnson boards his Aerospatiale 350 ASTAR wide-body jet turbine, he’s actor Robert Duvall, leading a helicopter raid against the Viet Cong in “Apocalypse Now.”

“There’s nothing quite as much fun as putting on Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and flying low level at 160 knots in Owens Valley,” Johnson says.

Translated, the Anaheim businessman says that means soaring “super low and super fast”--about 185 miles per hour--while blasting over his “awesome” in-flight stereo system the electrifying Wagnerian excerpt that Duvall’s gonzo character blared on board to accompany his hellacious mission.

Naturally, it’s not every day that Johnson takes a thrill ride over the Sierra Nevada. He deploys his $1-million French-made chopper more often for his pharmaceutical business, delivering hospital supplies and attending meetings, he said.

But, in and around Orange County, which has about 40 heliports and a half-dozen companies that charter copters for executives or entertainment seekers, helicopters are used every day for an array of reasons.

For instance, while not as speed-lusty as Johnson, Clare Flaxman recently chartered a copter to give girlfriend Jill-Anna Bauer a 20-minute, $325 birthday sunset ride along the coast as prelude to dinner at the Ritz.

“At the price of those things, you don’t want to go more than 20 minutes,” said Flaxman, who enjoyed the sights as the sun dropped below the smoggy horizon. From about 500 feet up, aboard the buoyant, relatively quiet flying machine, blue and white boats formed tidy rows in Newport Harbor, surfers sought waves, Fashion Island sprawled.

So-called “heli-dining” is popular among those tired of trekking to the same old neighborhood restaurant.

More than one company whisks diners to the Tower Restaurant, 18 minutes away from Costa Mesa on the top floor of the 32-story TransAmerica building in downtown Los Angeles.

“We drop folks off . . . they go in for dinner, we pick them up, and we tour the L.A. basin area,” said Steve Ford, chief pilot and a manager at Helistream Inc., which shares a heliport next to John Wayne Airport with Helitrans and Tridair Helicopters Inc.

Three couples can make the jaunt for about $1,000, Ford said. Naturally, that doesn’t include food and drink at the three-star restaurant, nor a “red carpet roll out” for an additional $35, a basket of roses for $35, a tuxedoed pilot for $90, and the obligatory bottle of Dom Perignon for $100.

And, yes, romance as well as extravagance exists beneath the rotary blades. Forget the limo routine, whirlybird proposals are commonplace in these parts.

Doug Daigle, Tridair chief pilot and president, has launched many such flights, but one hovers above the rest.

Though Daigle doesn’t remember the couple’s names, it happened one winter when Tridair spelled out WILL YOU MARRY ME? in Christmas lights on the roof of an Irvine skyscraper.

After the bride- and groom-to-be boarded, “we went out for a real nice sunset flight over Newport Beach and around the bay,” Daigle recalled. “They popped a bottle of champagne and we came over the building and there it was, all lit up. It was quite emotional.”

Men pop the question in Tridair copters up to five times a month, reports Daigle, who also carries just-marrieds from church parking lots to their receptions, with charters running $525 per hour.

Joy rides for rent aside, some well-heeled county residents have come to see that owning their own propeller set is de rigueur to life in the gridlock lane. One socially prominent couple just the other day flew into Los Angeles at peak rush hour in plenty of time to make supper and “Phantom of the Opera.”

“We left at 4:30 and landed in a parking lot by the Dorothy Chandler (Pavilion) at about 4:50,” said the lady of the house, who didn’t want to be identified. “Then we had a taxi pick us up there, take us to dinner, and back to theater. Then we limoed home--you can’t fly after a certain hour in the evening.”

Newport Beach developer William Lyon, who has the county’s only residential helipad at his 130-plus acre Coto de Caza estate, is reportedly often flown in his six-passenger chopper to Los Angeles and beyond. He didn’t return several calls to talk about it.

Lately copter charter managers report that business has slowed. They attribute the slump to typical pre-holiday sluggishness, the end of the tourist season and the real estate recession. Developers, they said, aren’t using copters as much to survey or photograph properties.

The Middle East crisis also seems to be hurting the business. Helitrans pilot Allen Pait says the price of copter fuel has nearly doubled to $3 a gallon in the past few months.

Despite the problems, most of the helicopter airborne hours of use are by consistent customers: law enforcement agencies, the medical industry and businesses.

Police track suspects on the run and trauma centers transport the critically ill with an alacrity that saves lives. Whether a corporation owns its own or not, corporations use whirlybirds for myriad needs, not the least of which is to shuttle employees to and from meetings.

So much for the phone, a fax or freeways, Hughes Aircraft Co. operates 11 heliports in Southern California, two in Orange County, and regularly transports “personnel from place to place to conduct business,” said Phil Berg, the firm’s flight operations manager.

Though some report that developers are chartering copters less, they typically put the aircraft to frequent use, and “construction companies use them for all kinds of things too, like checking on the progress of a project,” said aviation consultant Wright.

Charters can cost these firms as much as $700 per hour, depending on passenger capacity, and buying a chopper can run anywhere from $500,000 to $3 million or more, Wright said, and that doesn’t cover maintenance or what it costs to hire a flight crew.

“A copter is an expensive piece of equipment to operate, but in context, it becomes very cost effective when you can get to a dozen sites in a day,” he said.

Of course, some jobs seem to scream out for an eggbeater operation, such as the one Aris Helicopters of Los Angeles performed at Disneyland a while back.

“Once we lifted the elephant out of the Jungle Ride because his ears weren’t working quite properly,” said Aris general manager and pilot Art Gotisar. “That was quite an unusual sight, to see a full-size elephant dangling below the copter.”

Then there are those individuals for whom the collective fantasy of Southern California commuters is reality: Rising above it all, they fly to the office.

Just the other day, in fact, Tom Selleck chartered a chopper to get from home, “way, way, way out in the valley,” to work, the star’s publicist said. Landing at a Placentia helipad, the actor had to make practice with the Angels at Anaheim Stadium to prepare for an upcoming baseball film. Guess someone’s gotta get paid millions to do it.

Rock stars also zip in and out of Pacific Amphitheatre and Irvine Meadows concert arenas, according to Kevin La Rosa, president of Jetcopters, who has flown the likes of George Michael.

Having a heliport at his home away from home and at work makes life easier for Brian Chuchua, who takes the 45-minute trip from his ranch in north San Diego to his Jeep dealership in Placentia three days a week. His grassy landing pad there, smack dab beside Placentia Boulevard, is also home base for Chuck Street, who does traffic reports over Los Angeles and Orange counties for radio station KIIS-AM and FM.

With traffic the way it is and the way it’s bound to be worse, one Santa Ana company did come up with a plan for copter-pooling employees to work. ACL Technologies Inc.’s operation, which would have been the first such copter-commuting program in Southern California, never took off, though.

The problem basically boiled down to a lack of funds, said Greg Ward, vice president of sales and marketing for ACL, which makes equipment for testing airplane parts.

“If we ever come up with some extra cash, we’ll do it,” said Ward, adding: “This is pretty embarrassing. We ended up with a van pool.”