Save Our Skies Coalition, a group opposed to helicopter sightseeing operations, will meet at the Qualla Community Center off U.S. 441 in Jackson County on Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. For more information, call 828.497.9656.

Donald Lambert was troubled by the smell of kerosene in his mother’s small trailer in Cherokee one day when he made his regular visit. He got down on his knees and checked her heater and her stove but found no leaks.

Then Lambert spied the culprit: a pile of laundry on the sofa brought in from the line. The sightseeing helicopter next door had been idling all day between flights and the laundry was permeated with its exhaust fumes.

Lambert’s 84-year-old mother, Nellie, had already been driven indoors by the noise and fumes generated by Cherokee Helicopters, which is popular for its inexpensive three- to five-minute flights that take off and land all day during tourist season.

“I can’t go outdoors all summer. I have to keep my door shut when it starts up, and the smell still gets in the house,” said 84-year-old Nellie Lambert.

The noise is just as bad. Lambert has one sofa made up like a bed to nap on during the day, but is continually interrupted by the chopper.

“That noise gets in my head,” she said.

When Nellie Lambert turned 80, her family planned a big birthday cookout at her house along Soco Creek. But the helicopter had a line of customers that day and was drowning out their conversation. The family pulled the table cloth off the picnic table, put their mother in the car, abandoned the grill, bought a tub of fried chicken and moved the party to the public park along the Oconaluftee River in Cherokee.

Cherokee Helicopters operated on the Cherokee Reservation for about 20 years until the late 1990s when complaints from residents and businesses spurred tribal officials to ban the sightseeing business. So the helicopter operator moved — but not by far. They found a two-acre tract in the Whittier area of Jackson County surrounded on three sides by the Reservation and just a half-mile from the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.

The new site was right next door to Tunnie Katt’s trailer, spoiling her family tradition of eating outdoors after church on Sunday.

“Sunday I like to visit with my people, my friends, my kids. We have to talk over it when it’s rattling down on us,” said Katt. “Sunday is supposed to be the Lord’s day of rest. I don’t like them running on Sunday.”

The helicopter rides have grown in popularity in recent years as tourism in Cherokee has increased, largely due to advertising and promotion of Cherokee made possible by casino dollars. The helicopter offers a fun, positive experience for tourists, according to Jim Garst, manager of Cherokee Helicopters.

“You’ve got nothing to do on that side of the park,” Garst said. “It’s fun. It’s such a unique thing.”

And it’s affordable, too, Garst said. At Niagara Falls, a five-minute helicopter ride is $60 a person, nearly four times what Cherokee Helicopters charges.

Garst said lots of locals ride the helicopter, especially when they have family visiting from out of town.

“It is absolutely gorgeous. It is mountains as far as you can see. You do not even see flat land,” Garst said.

Garst said people on the ground and in the yards often wave to the choppers, like a kid waving to a train that goes by.

“The only ones complaining are a handful,” Garst said.

But according to residents, the helicopter bothers more than just a handful of immediate neighbors.

Jim Smith lives a half-mile from the helicopter but in the direct path of the short out-and-back trips.

“All these houses in here are affected,” Smith said during a driving tour of several neighborhoods on the Cherokee Reservation and in Whittier that fall within the helicopter’s main route.

As Smith pulled onto his own road, he waved at neighbors sitting in their yards and to each passing car. He drove up a small hill to his house, a good vantage point of the valley the helicopter frequents.

“As he comes through here, he’s right at eye level,” Smith said.

When the helicopter moved off the Reservation and into Jackson County’s domain, residents lobbied the Jackson County commissioners to pass a helicopter ordinance. Cherokee Helicopters promptly appealed the ordinance in court and won.

“If that darn judge had come out here and sat on my porch, he’d sing a different tune,” Nellie Lambert said.

Economics 101

Two weeks ago, a small loose-knit group of residents opposed to the helicopter launched a new fight to rid their community of the intrusion. Under the name Save Our Skies, or SOS, residents bothered by the noise began plastering Cherokee with posters that read, “Do not ride the helicopter.”

“We need to tell visitors to this area this is not just a joy ride. It is not an innocuous harmless recreation. It’s got consequences,” said Earl Davis, a leader of SOS and owner of Moonshadow Learning Center on the edge of Jackson County and the Reservation.

At Moonshadow, groups of at-risk youth doing ropes courses and outdoor exercises have to stop and wait for the helicopter to pass before Davis can resume his instruction. Davis counted 50 flights in one day last summer, ruining the effectiveness of his courses.

Davis asked the helicopter operator to alter the route, which the company did for awhile, but given the pilot rotation schedule he was not out from under the flight path for long.

“I realized his recipe for success is to make more and more noise, and we’re in his shadow. So either he’s going to be successful and our quality of life suffers, or we’re going to make his business unsuccessful,” Davis said.

Groups of residents in the flight path are planning to picket the sidewalk in front of the Cherokee Helicopter on Saturdays. Davis envisions a sign that reads: “If you ride in this helicopter, you may as well spit in our face,” but will probably go with a more benign slogan like, “Save Our Skies” and “Don’t ride the helicopter.”

“If folks will join us in our expression of dismay and discontent, we can start to make some changes,” Davis said.

Garst has offered the tribe a solution of his own. He offered to sell the tribe the two-acre tract for $1.5 million.

“We understand the tribe has a concern. So if you would like to buy it, fine; if you don’t want to buy it, fine,” Garst said. “We have given them that opportunity.”

Garst said the price tag is not unreasonable. It is prime commercial property on a four-lane road half a mile from the casino. Plus, the price tag compensates for revenue the company would lose.

Otherwise, “we’re not going away,” Garst said.

A real fighter pilot

Cherokee Helicopters has a sister operation in Tennessee called Great Smoky Mountain Helicopters. It operated in Pigeon Forge until the mid-1990s, when the city passed an ordinance banning sightseeing helicopters. The company was given two years to move out.

When the two years were up, it refused to move and challenged the ordinance in court. The company lost at the local court level but appealed to the next level and won. The city of Pigeon Forge appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which upheld the ordinance.

There is a crucial difference between the Pigeon Forge ordinance, which was ultimately upheld, and Jackson’s ordinance, which was defeated. Jackson County’s ordinance tried to regulate airspace, which is the domain of the federal government. Not even states, let alone counties, have jurisdiction over airspace. Pigeon Forge’s ordinance took the land-use approach, however, banning sightseeing helicopter operations as it would other high-impact land uses like shooting ranges or asphalt plants.

Garst said complaints from neighbors go with the territory.

Garst compared the helicopter operation to an asphalt plant, another industry that invokes the ire of neighbors. He also equated it to go-carts, a beneficial tourism business with a noisy by-product.

Garst estimates Cherokee Helicopters brings in $400,000 annually. That’s before expenses, though, like pilot salaries and insurance, which alone costs upwards of $500 a day. The Cherokee operation has only recently become lucrative, as tourism at the casino has increased. For years it was subsidized by the operation in Tennessee, Garst said.

A looming threat

Smith said the plan to force the sightseeing company out of business by eroding its customer base could succeed if the hundreds of residents and businesses bothered by the chopper join forces. But it’s questionable. Cherokee people are non-confrontational by nature. When they do complain, they are subtle about it.

That is probably a good description of people like Katt. She lost two sisters in recent years and had to tolerate the helicopter joy rides next to her house during her grieving period. Her comment on the intrusion was simply: “I didn’t appreciate that very much.”

After rallying the troops four years ago only to be defeated in court, many have lost hope that they can change anything. People have even stopped calling the helicopter company and complaining, a fact Garst is quick to point out.

“It’s not real traditional for Cherokee people to speak out,” said Jim Farris, a locksmith in Cherokee who has joined SOS. “I think a lot of people have gotten discouraged, and we are going to have to reinvigorate these folks.”

Armed with a stack of flyers and scotch tape, Farris made rounds to Cherokee businesses last week asking to post the notices in their windows or at their counters.

“There are mixed feelings. There are people who don’t care one way or another. He’s probably not flying over them half a dozen times an hour,” said Farris, who lives in the flight path. “You got to stop talking, everyone’s got to tolerate the noise and the distraction, and it happens all over again a few minutes later.”

When Farris was hanging a flyer at the post office, he used the opportunity to engage passersby about their opinions on the chopper. One man was ambivalent. The helicopter didn’t fly over his house, the man said.

“I told him ‘Yet. It doesn’t fly over your house yet,’” Farris said. “It very quickly became an issue for him. As more and more people have to tolerate the distraction and noise and loss of privacy, more and more people will become concerned enough to actually do something.”

Taking care of business

Mary Hartline is one Jackson County resident who’s never stopped retaliating. She got so aggravated by the helicopter flying over her hotel, the Golden Eagle, she went to the store and bought two big kites, ran them out her sunroof, and drove up and down the private road in front of her hotel, getting up enough speed to make the kites fly.

Hartline said she did it just to aggravate the pilot, even though her kite didn’t fly high enough to interfere with his flight path.

Some have contemplated a campaign to paint their roofs with unflattering messages for the helicopter.

Hartline was part of the fight four years ago to get a Jackson County ordinance outlawing the helicopter. She helped collect signatures on a petition, an easy task at the Great Smoky Mountain RV Park that sprawls along Soco Creek behind the hotel. She would walk along the rows of RVs occupied by seasonal residents and have to shout over the helicopter to ask for their signature.

When Hartline’s guests inquire about the helicopter, she explains the impact of the helicopter on locals.

“You’d be talking and he’d go over, and they’d understand what you were talking about,” Hartline said.

The helicopter is more than a tourist draw, Garst said. Garst cited a long list of contributions the company makes to the region. Its pilots can spot marijuana plots from the air and have aided in drug busts. Pilots have lowered large stones into place on chimneys of mountaintop homes unreachable by a crane.

Pilots have done rescue for lost and injured hikers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and helped fight with forest fires. They have airlifted logs to volunteers building shelters on the Appalachian Trail.

They have shuttled around photographers doing aerial work for the tribe and conducted aerial power line patrols. They sent a chopper to scout for debris when the space shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas.

“I’m pretty positive about the good we do,” said Garst.