I booked the tour online at the Safari Helicopters website for a flight time later in the week. We received a call from them later that same day asking if we could take the tour the next morning instead to fill in a last minute cancellation.

We were promised front row seats in the helicopter (pending weight calculations), so we jumped on the opportunity and adjusted our plans.

During the 50-55 minutes of flight time, we saw tropical rainforests, volcanic cinder cones, volcano craters, bright red glowing lava, fields of lava rock, Mauna Kea mountain, Mauna Loa mountain, waterfalls on the Wailuku River and Hilo Bay.