The volcano
One of the most active volcanoes on Earth, 2,632 metres high, sitting inside its own collapsed caldera with the whole thing open to the sea. From the road you get one rim at a time. A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour gives you the Enclos Fouque in a single frame, which is the only way the scale of it makes sense.
Quick answer
A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour costs from $375 for forty-five minutes. That route leaves Saint-Pierre, the closest airfield to the volcano, and takes in the cirques on the same flight. The fifty-five-minute circuits at $422 add Trou de Fer and both coasts. From the ground you can walk to the crater rim in about five hours return, when the access road and the trail are open.
What the volcano looks like from above
A thirteen-kilometre horseshoe, a cone in the middle, and a lava corridor running to the sea.
A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour answers a question the road cannot. From the viewpoint at Pas de Bellecombe you look across the Enclos Fouque at the cone. It is impressive and it is one angle. From the air the geometry resolves: a horseshoe-shaped collapse about thirteen kilometres across, open on the eastern side, with the Dolomieu cone sitting in the middle of a floor of black lava that is visibly layered by eruption.
The eastern opening is the Grand Brule, a corridor of bare lava running all the way down to the sea. Flows from recent decades are still black and unvegetated; older ones carry a thin green skin. Seen from above, the corridor reads like a record of the last century, laid out in stripes.
Around the caldera the Plaine des Sables is a high desert of red and grey ash that looks nothing like the rest of this island. A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour usually crosses it on the way in, and the contrast with the green cirques ten minutes earlier is the thing people remember about the flight as a whole.
Book direct
Every Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour on this site, with our pick first. The thirty-five-minute flight reaches the interior rather than the crater, and is here for comparison.
★ 4.6 · 66 reviews
★ 4.7 · 190 reviews
★ 4.9 · 27 reviews
★ 4.1 · 7 reviews
★ 4.8 · 138 reviews
Flying it versus walking it
A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour and the walk into the caldera are both worth doing, and they are not substitutes. One shows you the shape; the other puts you on the rock.
Forty-five or fifty-five minutes, from $375. You see the Enclos, the cone, the Grand Brule and the Plaine des Sables in a single sequence, and the cirques on the same flight.
About five hours return from Pas de Bellecombe, down the ladder into the Enclos and across the lava to the cone. You get the texture, the heat off the rock and the silence.
The access road reaches the rim viewpoint and no further. Everything beyond it is on foot or in the air.
The route into the Enclos is closed during eruptions and after heavy weather. Flights continue when the walk does not, because they stay outside the restricted zone.
The walk is best begun at first light for the temperature. The flight is best at first light for the cloud. They compete for the same morning.
Fly on an early day of the trip, walk later in the week. The flight makes sense of what you walked across.
When Piton de la Fournaise is erupting, the ground route into the caldera closes and scenic flights keep operating outside the restricted zone. Check the listing on the day; the operators adjust the circuit rather than cancel it.
Cloud and cancellations→Which route to book
Forty-five minutes from Saint-Pierre for the volcano and the cirques; fifty-five for all of it.
Forty-five minutes at $375 is our pick. It leaves from Pierrefonds at Saint-Pierre, which is the closest airfield to the volcano, so this Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour reaches the Enclos quickly and still has time for the cirques on the way back. Sixty-six ratings at 4.6 stand behind it.
Fifty-five minutes at $422 is the complete version. The volcano, all three cirques, Trou de Fer and both coasts, at the lowest cost per minute of any helicopter here, with 190 ratings at 4.7 — more evidence than any other listing on this site.
The thirty-five-minute flight at $299 does not reach the crater. It is the cheapest helicopter on the island and it flies the interior. If the volcano is why you are flying, it is not the one to book, and we would rather say so than let the price decide for you.
A microlight is not a Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour. An open two-seat aircraft flying at lower levels cannot work the 2,632-metre summit the way a turbine helicopter does. They are a lovely coastal flight and they are a different product.
Common questions
From $375 for forty-five minutes from Saint-Pierre, which includes the cirques. The fifty-five-minute circuits at $422 add Trou de Fer and both coasts.
A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour works the Enclos Fouque and the summit area within the rules that apply on the day. During eruptions a restricted zone is set and operators fly the circuit around it.
They show you different things. The flight gives you the whole caldera, the lava corridor to the sea and the cirques in the same hour. The walk, about five hours return, puts you on the lava itself. If you have the days, do both.
2,632 metres, inside a horseshoe-shaped caldera roughly thirteen kilometres across that is open to the sea on its eastern side.
Only during an eruption, and no operator promises it. What is always there is the record of past eruptions: black flows across the caldera floor and down the Grand Brule to the coast.
Pierrefonds at Saint-Pierre, in the south. A Piton de la Fournaise helicopter tour from there spends fewer of its minutes getting to the Enclos than one starting on the west coast.
Go deeper
From $196 to $422, and what a minute in the air is worth.
The verdictOne recommendation for each town, and why.
No roadFourteen kilometres by seven, and not one road into it.
The chasmWaterfalls in a hole in the forest, reached no other way.
The cirquesMafate, Cilaos and Salazie in thirty-six minutes.
The townsFour towns, and what each one puts under you first.
Saint-Pierre: Helicopter Flight over the Volcano and Cirques
★ 4.9 · 646 reviews · Free cancellation 24 h