Most lifts should go on a crane. If the load sits within reach of a hardstand, the truck can get to it, and nobody minds the street being closed for the morning, a Franna or a 50 tonne slewer will do the job for a fraction of what a helicopter costs. We say that on our pricing page, and we say it to about a third of the people who call us.
The other two-thirds have a site that breaks one of the crane's assumptions. When that happens the crane quote starts growing: a bigger machine to get the reach, a road closure to park it, traffic control to manage the closure, a second day because the closure only runs at night. Somewhere in that growth the helicopter, which was never cheap, becomes the cheaper option.
This guide is about finding that point. It uses our published AS350 rates and publicly available crane hire ranges, and it works through two lifts we have actually flown.
How the two are priced
The two machines charge for completely different things, which is why comparing hourly rates tells you nothing.
A mobile crane charges for the machine by the hour or the day, and the rate scales with capacity. Published Australian ranges for 2026 sit around $170 to $250 an hour for a 15 to 25 t Franna, $220 to $350 for a 25 to 60 t mobile, $350 to $600 for a 60 to 100 t all-terrain, and $500 to $1,000 an hour for anything over 100 t, usually with a four hour minimum. On top of that come transport to site (a large all-terrain crane arrives with counterweight on separate trucks), a dogman and rigger, permits, and, where the crane has to stand on a road, traffic management. Traffic management is the figure people forget: for a CBD or busy suburban street it runs $3,000 to $12,000 for a closure, and the closure window often dictates night work.
A helicopter charges for flight time. Our AS350 is $3,500 an hour on task, billed in six minute increments, with a four hour minimum of $14,000 ex GST. Add a one-way mobilisation fee that depends on the region ($1,800 for Brisbane, $2,200 Gold Coast, $2,400 Sunshine Coast, up to $16,800 for Mount Isa) and a site complexity multiplier for tight or high-exposure sites. There is no transport truck, no counterweight, no outrigger pad and, in most cases, no road closure, because the aircraft never touches the street.
So the honest starting position is this: a crane's floor is around $1,200 a day and a helicopter's floor is around $16,000 for a Brisbane job. The crane wins by a mile on an easy site. The question is what your site adds to the crane's floor.
The six conditions that flip the maths
1. Setback: how far the load sits from where a crane can stand
This is the big one. A crane's capacity falls off sharply with radius. A 25 t Franna that lifts 25 t at 3 m can manage a few hundred kilograms at 15 m and nothing useful at 30 m. A 700 kg rooftop unit sitting 35 m back from the kerb on a ten-storey building is a 130 to 200 t all-terrain crane job, not because the load is heavy but because it is far away. That crane costs $500 to $1,000 an hour, needs half a day to rig, arrives on three or four trucks, and needs somewhere to stand.
A helicopter does not care about radius. Seven hundred kilograms on the hook is the same lift whether it goes 10 m or 100 m from the laydown area. Once the crane you need is over about 100 t, get a helicopter quote alongside it.
2. Road closure and traffic management
If the only place the crane can set up is the road, you are paying for a closure: the permit, the traffic management plan, the crew and the barriers, and the constraint that CBD closures usually run overnight or on Sunday. That is $3,000 to $12,000 in traffic management alone, plus the crane and crew on penalty rates.
A helicopter lift on the same building typically needs a short exclusion zone under the flight path, managed by our ground crew, for the 15 to 25 minutes the aircraft is actually over the site. On the Brisbane CBD chiller swap below, the street stayed open and the building kept trading.
3. Ground that will not hold outriggers
Large cranes put enormous point loads through their outrigger pads. Landscaped ground, suspended slabs, car park decks, older heritage courtyards and the soft edge of a creek bank all need engineering sign-off or a built pad before a crane can stand there, and sometimes the answer is simply no. Our Wide Bay bridge beams job existed because no crane pad could be built on either bank of a protected creek.
4. No road, or a road the truck cannot use
Hinterland blocks with a steep gravel driveway, islands, ridgelines, escarpments, telecom tower sites, powerline easements. A crane needs to drive to within reach of the load. If it cannot, the alternatives are building a road, bringing a barge, or flying. Building access for a one-off lift is almost never worth it, and a barge has its own weather window. This is where helicopters stop being the expensive option and start being the only option, which is why most of our difficult access lifting work comes from this category.
5. Time on site, when the site cannot stop
A crane on a live site is a crane on a live site for six to eight hours. For a shopping centre, a hospital, a resort or a working plant, that is six to eight hours of closed car park, halted operations, diverted customers or a stopped production line, and the cost of that rarely appears on the crane quote. A helicopter is typically on task for about 20 minutes of flight time. The whole event, from crew briefing to hook-off, runs a little over an hour on a straightforward job.
6. Many drop points spread over distance
Forty power poles along a 12 km easement. Tracker frames across a solar farm. Water tanks on four island properties. A crane does these one setup at a time, driving, levelling and rigging between each. A helicopter does them as a series of cycles from one laydown area, often a few minutes apart. On the Darling Downs pole change-out, four days of flying replaced what would have been weeks of crane and track work.
Worked example 1: a rooftop chiller in the Brisbane CBD
The lift: one 580 kg chiller off, one on, at the plant deck of a tower on Adelaide Street. Roof edge roughly 30 m back from the kerb.
Helicopter. Four hour minimum at $3,500 ($14,000), Brisbane mobilisation $1,800, CBD rooftop multiplier of 1.42 covering the airspace coordination and site assessment. Call it $20,000 to $22,500 ex GST. Flight time on task was about 20 minutes, the street stayed open, and the building never stopped trading. Full write-up on the project page.
Crane. At that radius and height you are into a 130 t class all-terrain crane. Using the published ranges: crane at $500 to $1,000 an hour with a realistic 8 to 10 hour day including rigging and de-rigging, transport and counterweight trucks, dogman and rigger, a night road closure with traffic management at $3,000 to $12,000, and the permit. A fair estimate lands somewhere between $12,000 and $25,000, with the top of that range more likely for a CBD night closure. Add whatever it costs the building to lose the street frontage and the loading dock for a night.
On price alone the two overlap. On price plus disruption, the helicopter wins, and it wins decisively if the crane needs two closures because the old unit and the new one cannot both be handled in one window.
Worked example 2: a swim spa into a hinterland backyard
The lift: a 620 kg swim spa over a house on a Gold Coast hinterland block with a steep driveway and the pad on the downhill side.
Helicopter. Four hour minimum ($14,000), Gold Coast mobilisation $2,200, suburban backyard multiplier of 1.18. Roughly $18,700 to $19,500 ex GST, and the spa was on its pad in under a minute of hover. Project page.
Crane. If a 25 t Franna could reach the pad from the driveway, it would do this for $1,500 to $3,000 and we would tell you to book one. On this block it could not: the reach over the house put it into a 60 to 100 t all-terrain, the driveway could not take the truck, and the only setup position was a road with no verge. The crane quote, once it included transport, a closure and a second machine to get the first one in, was not far under the helicopter's, and it carried a real risk of turning up and not fitting.
This is the pattern for spa and pool lifts generally: on a flat suburban block, crane; on a hinterland or canal-front block where the pad is behind the house, get both quotes. The full day, step by step, is in Getting a spa into a backyard with no access.
When the crane wins
Because we would rather you called us for the right job than the wrong one:
- The load is a single piece over 800 kg. That is the AS350's working maximum. Heavier single pieces go on a crane or, for jobs that justify it, a heavy lift aircraft up to 4,000 kg that we bring in on request. Structural steel that can be split into sub-800 kg members flies well; a 3 t transformer does not.
- The site is open and the truck can get there. A crane that can set up within reach on firm ground will always be cheaper. This describes most residential jobs on flat blocks.
- Placement needs to be held. A crane can hold a load in position for as long as it takes to bolt it. A helicopter places precisely, often within centimetres, but it does not dwell. If the connection needs ten minutes of fitting with the load suspended, that is crane work.
- The lift is indoors, under cover, or under power lines with no vertical clearance. Obvious, but asked more often than you would think.
- The schedule cannot move for weather. We fly in most conditions but not in strong wind, storm cells or low cloud on a ridgeline, and afternoon storm windows from October to March are real. A crane in a car park is less exposed.
A five-question test
Before you get either quote, answer these:
- Can a truck get to within about 20 m of the load on firm ground? If yes, start with a crane.
- Is the load more than 800 kg in a single piece? If yes, crane, or ask us about heavy lift.
- Would the crane have to stand on a road, and would the road need closing? Every yes here moves you toward the helicopter.
- Does the site need to keep operating during the lift?
- Are there more than three drop points, or is any drop point more than 100 m from the nearest crane position?
Two or more yeses on questions three to five, or a no on question one, and you should price both. Request a lift and you will get an indicative helicopter figure in about a minute, and the pricing page shows how the number is built. If the figures are close, send us the address and a photo; we will tell you straight if a crane is the better call.
Parker Aero operates helicopter lifting across Queensland from Archerfield under the Air Operator's Certificate of Bekaa Air Pty Ltd (CASA.AOC.0537, Part 138 aerial work CASA.138AWK.0510). We reply within one business day: Request a lift or call 0418 878 707.