Where do New Zealand helicopter flights depart from? All 5 towns

Franz Josef township sits in temperate rainforest on the West Coast, almost directly beneath its glacier. That geography is unusual anywhere in the world and it is why the helicopter flights here are both short and cheap: twenty minutes is enough to reach the neve, land on it and come home.

What you fly over: the Franz Josef icefall, where the glacier breaks into blue seracs over a step in the bedrock; the Fox Glacier a few valleys south on the longer flights; and the snowfields that feed both of them.

The flights: twenty minutes with a snow landing from $196, the best-evidenced flight in the country at $216 with 693 reviews, both glaciers at $265, and thirty-five minutes over two glaciers at $270 with 527 reviews at 4.9.

Getting there: about five hours from Queenstown over the Haast Pass, or three and a half from Greymouth. It is a destination rather than a day trip.

Queenstown is the busiest helicopter town in New Zealand and it has the widest range on this page: twenty minutes over the Remarkables at $167, fifty minutes to the hanging glaciers of Earnslaw Burn at $399, and ninety minutes across the alps to Milford Sound at $687.

What you fly over: Lake Wakatipu, about eighty kilometres long and shaped like a lightning bolt; the Remarkables range that gives the town its skyline; and, on the longer flights, valleys with no road into them at all.

Wanaka is an hour away over the Crown Range and it is the quieter version: one flight on this page at $246, thirty minutes over the lake and into the alps with a glacier landing, rated 5.0 across 93 reviews. If Queenstown slots are full, this is usually the answer.

Aoraki / Mount Cook stands 3,724 metres, the highest mountain in New Zealand, at the head of a dry brown basin that looks nothing like the West Coast. Below it the Tasman Glacier runs about twenty-three kilometres, the longest in the country, ending in a grey terminal lake that has grown within living memory.

The flights: twenty-five minutes with an alpine landing at $207 with 514 reviews; the Tasman Glacier flight at $357; and the unusual one — a ski plane lands you on the glacier and a helicopter brings you back, at $300 with 356 reviews.

Getting there: about three hours from Queenstown and four from Christchurch. Most flights leave from Mount Cook Airport or from Glentanner, a little further down the valley.