Helicopter orders are Township's first and most consistent source of coins and XP — but filling them efficiently requires knowing which orders to take, which to dump, when to use boosters, and the neighbor-visit trick that cuts delivery time to near zero. Here's everything you need.
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The First Thing You Learn and Never Fully Optimize
The Helipad unlocks basically at the start of Township, and for the first few hours it feels completely intuitive — residents want things, you send them things, you get coins. Then at some point you realize you've been filling every single order including the ones that pay fewer coins than just selling the items in your barn directly, and you've been waiting full delivery cycles without knowing you can skip them entirely by visiting a neighbor for two seconds. The helicopter system has more depth than it looks like from the outside.
At its core, helicopter orders are your primary source of coins and XP throughout the early and mid-game. The number of available orders scales with your town's population — more residents means more simultaneous orders, which means more coins per session when you're running efficiently. The system rewards players who choose orders strategically rather than filling everything indiscriminately, and there are a handful of tricks that experienced Township players use every session that most beginners discover too late.
How Helicopter Orders Work — The Basics
Mechanic | Quick Summary |
Where to find orders | Tap the Helipad near your starting field area. Left side = residents with orders. Right side = items needed per order |
Rewards per order | Coins + XP. Some orders give more coins, some more XP — you choose based on what you need. Some orders pay fewer coins than selling directly in the barn |
Dumping an order | Press the trash icon. Refreshes in 30 minutes OR spend 4 T-cash to refresh instantly. Freely dump orders that aren't worth your production |
Delivery time trick | After sending: visit any neighbor's town (Ernie works), then return immediately. Helicopter will be back and ready to send again — skips the delivery wait |
Order count scaling | More residents = more active orders available simultaneously. Higher level = more orders but also more complex items requested |
Generous Customer booster | Doubles coin value of all helicopter orders for 2 days. Combine with Vibrant Market booster for maximum coin output. Pink coin numbers show booster is active |
Priority vs Trains/Planes | Community consensus: trains and planes are higher priority than helicopters. Planes give gems for boosters, trains give barn expansion tools. Do helis after transport orders |
How to Fill Orders Faster — The Neighbor Visit Trick
This is the most universally shared tip in the Township community and it works every time. When you send a helicopter order, the helicopter physically flies to the customer's building and back before you can send the next one. That delivery animation takes a few seconds but it adds up across a full session of order-filling. The trick: the moment you press send, immediately visit any neighbor's town — Ernie's town works even if you don't have friends playing — then return immediately to your town. When you arrive back, the helicopter is already waiting at the pad ready for the next order.
The Township Fandom Wiki confirms this works because visiting a town refreshes your own town's state. The delivery animation completes in the background during the visit. You don't need to do anything in the neighbor's town — tap visit, tap back, tap send. Once this is muscle memory it makes a meaningful difference in how many orders you can complete per session, particularly when you're running the Generous Customer booster and want to maximize coins in the active window.
Which Orders to Take and Which to Dump
The Coin-Per-Item Calculation
Not all helicopter orders are worth your production resources. The Township Fandom Wiki is explicit about this: 'some orders offer less coins than selling the good(s) in barn.' Before accepting any order, mentally compare what you'd earn from the order versus selling the items directly. If an order wants three loaves of bread and offers 120 coins, but three loaves sold in the barn would net 150 coins, that order costs you 30 coins to complete. Dump it.
The general rule from the community: prioritize orders in the 300+ coin range and deprioritize orders below 150 coins unless you specifically need XP more than coins at that moment. Some orders give better XP at lower coin value — if you're actively trying to level up, taking a high-XP low-coin order makes sense. If you're grinding coins for a building or expansion, skip anything below your personal threshold and let it refresh.
The 30-Minute Refresh — Use It Freely
Dumping a low-value order refreshes it in 30 minutes at no cost. There is no penalty for dumping orders beyond the wait time. The community advice across multiple Township guides is consistent: dump orders freely when they're not worth your production. An order slot occupied by a bad offer blocks the slot from generating a better offer. Clearing it starts the 30-minute clock toward something potentially better.
The 4 T-cash instant refresh is almost never worth using. T-cash is too valuable to spend on refreshing helicopter orders when the 30-minute free refresh exists. Save T-cash for barn expansion and building materials, not order refreshes.
Move the Helipad to Your Orders
This tip comes from the Township community forums and it's more useful than it sounds. When you're filling multiple helicopter orders in a row and your town layout means you're tapping residents scattered across the map, pick up the helipad itself and move it closer to the cluster of active orders. The helipad is a moveable building — hold it to enter build mode and drag it. Repositioning it near where you're filling orders reduces the amount of time you spend navigating the map between taps.
Boosters — When to Use Them and How to Stack Them
Generous Customer Booster
The Generous Customer booster from the laboratory doubles the coin value of all helicopter orders for 2 days. The pink coin numbers that appear on orders when the booster is active show the doubled value — you receive both the regular coin amount and the bonus coins. This is the primary coin acceleration tool for helicopter orders and should be activated when you have a barn stocked with easy-to-produce items and time to fill orders consistently. Activating it when your barn is empty and your crops won't be ready for hours wastes the duration.
Combining Generous Customer With Vibrant Market
The Township Fandom Wiki specifically recommends combining Generous Customer with the Vibrant Market booster for maximum coin output. Vibrant Market boosts selling prices in the barn, Generous Customer doubles helicopter order coin values — running both simultaneously during a productive session multiplies your income from both coin sources at once. Time your booster activations to overlap so both are active during your most resource-productive play sessions.
Helicopter Orders vs Trains and Planes — Priority Order
The community consensus from the Township Fandom forums is clear: trains and planes are higher priority than helicopter orders. One experienced level-93 player explains the reasoning directly: 'planes give me gems that I need for boosters (crop booster is a must for me) and trains bring various supplies including mining equipment, barn upgrades, expansions and materials when I'm building something. Helis are bringing coins, which is great, but they also increase XP which means they level up quickly — which is not ideal if your barn size can't cope with all the new products that they bring.'
That last point is worth understanding: every time you complete helicopter orders, you earn XP that can level your town up faster than your barn capacity can keep up with. Higher town levels unlock more types of products that residents request — and if your barn isn't big enough to store those products, you end up unable to fill orders. The strategic case for deprioritizing helicopters when your barn is struggling is real. Fill helicopter orders actively when your barn is healthy and production is flowing. Pull back on them when your barn is hitting capacity issues and you need to prioritize barn expansion through train and plane orders.
Asking Coop Members for Help on Orders
If you're in a co-op, other members can help fulfill your helicopter orders. This is one of the underused features for newer players who join co-ops primarily for regatta participation. When an order needs items you don't currently have, a co-op help request can get those items filled by members who do have them in stock. The social dynamic this creates — members helping each other's order queues — is one of the reasons active co-ops progress faster than solo play even when both have similar resource income.
The practical tip: when you're about to leave for the day and you have helicopter orders you can't currently fill, post a help request in your co-op chat before logging off. Members in different time zones can fill the items while you're away, and you come back to completable orders rather than an empty order queue.
The Barn Problem — Why It Matters for Helicopter Orders
The single most common reason helicopter order sessions become frustrating is a barn that doesn't have enough capacity. You have orders ready to fill, you have production facilities running, but the barn is full and you can't store what you need. Every Township guide eventually addresses this: barn expansion is more important than almost any other upgrade in the mid-game because everything else depends on barn capacity.
The train and plane system specifically gives barn expansion materials as rewards — which is another reason those transport orders take priority over helicopters. More barn space means more items stored, more helicopter orders fillable per session, more coins per day. The investment in barn expansion pays back faster than almost any other spend in Township because it removes the bottleneck that limits every other system's output.
Conclusion
Helicopter orders are Township's most consistent daily activity and the one most players spend the most cumulative time on across a full playthrough. The difference between filling orders methodically and filling them efficiently is the neighbor-visit trick, the order value filter, the strategic booster timing, and the decision to prioritize train and plane orders for barn expansion that makes everything else work better. None of these are complicated once you know them — they just don't get explained anywhere in the game.
Run the Generous Customer booster during your most productive sessions. Visit Ernie after every send. Dump anything below your coin threshold without guilt. Keep your barn expanding through train rewards to get it all you can instanly Top Up Township coins at LootBar. Everything else in the helicopter system works itself out once those habits are in place.
