ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — With a new helicopter service in town offering tours of the island, Orange Beach decided having a helicopter at each city’s disposal was a good thing.

Orange Beach’s City Council recently OK’d a contract with Oasis Services to use a helicopter for aerial observations, photos or emergencies. Gulf Shores is considering doing the same thing.

Funding it, however, turned out to be a little tricky.

“I guess from time to time there is a need for certain city personnel to utilize a helicopter for certain events,” City Attorney Wanda Cochran said. “I talked with Dottie (Mott) and she thought that the best way to handle that was through a purchase order like we would anything else and just enumerate specific people who were authorized to utilize the services and have them agree to the rate structure.”

The rates for using the helicopter would be $450 an hour from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then $650 an hour from 10 a.m. to dusk.

“The pre-10 a.m. is discounted is because they don’t have any scheduled tourist flights before 10 as the market doesn’t demand it,” City Administrator Ken Grimes said. “So they can go lower if we need to schedule that time for say aerial photography or a VIP guest tour.

“Once 10 a.m. arrives they have to charge more as they would be putting off a tour for a full-paying customer here on vacation thus losing a higher profit and it’s the peak time for their copter to be used by the tourists.”

Emergency flights would cost the city $350 an hour in a goodwill gesture by Oasis to help out when serious situations arise.

“If it’s an emergency and the city needs us, we want them to not hesitate to use us,” Managing Pilot Rod Kellogg said. “And we don’t want cost to be the reason someone doesn’t get saved or get someone searching for them. It’s basically a breakeven because the city has been so welcoming to us.”

Fire Chief Shane Phillips said money spent now on the Civil Air Patrol can be rerouted to help pay for the service he thinks will be vital to the city.

“That money was to fly the whole Alabama coastline,” Phillips said. “We sat down with Mr. Grimes and said if we’re going to do that we’d rather put that money local. Put that money to the helicopter service so he could just fly our beach. There are times when people wander off on rafts and stuff and we called in and said ‘can you go check these people out?’ That was the routine flight.”

A recent situation, Phillips said, showed how the service would be helpful to the city.

“A perfect example is about three or four weeks ago, unfortunately we had a drowning in Gulf Shores,” Phillips said. “They searched and searched and searched for this man. The helicopter got up and in five minutes they found him. There’s a value in that alone.”

In Orange Beach those authorized to call the helicopter into service are City Administrator (Grimes), the City’s EMA Director (Lanny Smith), Police Chief (Billy Wilkins, Fire Chief (Phillips) and Director of Community Development, Engineering and Environmental Department (Kit Alexander).

For flights lasting 20 minutes or less, a minimum charge of $100.00 will apply. For flights lasting longer than 20 minutes, only the hourly rate will apply, adjusted for each minute.

The company reserves the right to raise the rate if gas prices hit a certain level.

“If gas goes over $7 a gallon they want to be able to adjust the rate proportional,” Cochran said. “It’s basically a fixed rate for a year.”