''Hotelicopter'' is an

April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

video produced as a viral marketing campaign in 2009 by Hotelicopter, a hotel meta search site that has since been purchased by RoomKey. It showed a craft based on the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

giant

Mil V-12 The Mil V-12 (NATO reporting name: Homer), given the project number ''Izdeliye 65'' ("Item 65"), is the largest helicopter ever built. The designation "Mi-12" would have been the name for the production helicopter and was not applied to the V-12 ...

military helicopter, leading millions to believe the world's first luxury hotel/helicopter was a reality. The video and website explained the first commercial flight of ''Hotelicopter'' was scheduled to take off on 26 June 2009 from

JFK Airport John F. Kennedy International Airport (colloquially referred to as JFK Airport, Kennedy Airport, New York-JFK, or simply JFK) is the main international airport serving New York City. The airport is the busiest of the seven airports in the New ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and reach the UK later that August. In 2010, the ''

Christian Science Monitor Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρισ ...

'' named the ''Hotelicopter'' as one of its top five online April Fools' pranks. ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' also included the prank in its "10 best travel April fools," rating it as a 10/10.

References

External links

* * 2009 hoaxes April Fools' Day jokes Fictional helicopters Fictional hotels Helicopter airlines Internet hoaxes Viral videos {{internet-stub