When Ken Janik was contacted by Warner Bros. Studios early last summer with a request to lease his $600,000 helicopter for three months of filming in Chicago, he was a little confused.

"Of course, my first question was, what movie project would it be used for and in what types of scenes," said Janik, who treated 20 of his friends, family and coworkers to a group screening of the film on the July 18 opening day.

"And they kept telling me on the phone that it was going to be used in a film project being shot in Chicago called 'Rory's First Kiss.'

"But then, they were describing that it would be used as a police helicopter with all of these daring chase scenes down Wacker Drive in Downtown Chicago, and that's when I knew they were using a top-secret code name for the new Batman project."

Janik, who has owned Sun Aero Helicopters Inc., based at Lansing Municipal Airport, since 2003, said he's not all that unfamiliar with "special assignments" for his whirlybirds.

In 2005, his flight firm, which has a fleet of seven helicopters, was hired to fly talk-show host and TV shrink Dr. Phil McGraw to several meet-and-greet events at area shopping malls, including a drop in the parking lot of Westfield Southlake Mall in Hobart.

Most recently, a contract with ETA Co. has his helicopters flying NASCAR drivers to and from Chicagoland racetracks and various airports. Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch are all of his regulars being chauffeured among the clouds to quick destinations.

But flying high in the blockbuster motion picture of summer 2008 has exceeded all Janik's expectations.

As for why the studio knocked on his airport-hanger door, Janik says it was all about branding.

"Apparently, the studio has a preference that their projects use Bell aircrafts, and we had what they were looking for," he said.

After what he describes as a lucrative offer to have immediate use of his 1981 Bell Jet Ranger for June, July and August 2007, Janik's helicopter had its own version of "movie makeup."

The helicopter was painted and covered with decals to transform it into a Gotham City Police helicopter, complete with a search light, called a "night sun," attached to the nose of the craft.

For insurance reasons, Janik himself became part of the "movie deal." Outfitted in a police pilot uniform by wardrobe, he flew with the two stunt pilots. And as long as he was along for the ride, he also was asked if he'd operate the search light during the scenes, most of which were shot from 6 p.m. to midnight.

The old Downtown Chicago Post Office building doubled as Gotham City Hall, so many of the flying scenes began at that location and were shot with the helicopter diving and chasing its way down Wacker and LaSalle in hot pursuit.

Jarnik wasn't worried about the "prop paint" used for his helicopter after he was told by the set designers that it was vegetable oil-based and simply rinsed away with water. The decals also were removed easily.

"When they didn't need to use the helicopter for those three months, we just rinsed off their paint and took off the decals, and we were allowed to use it for our own charter flights," he said.

Janik's business is primarily giving day and night tours of Chicago and doing airport runs, so he was relieved the studio agreed to allow him to use the aircraft when crews didn't need it for filming.

"Much of our business is for fun tours, which I think is still kind of a little-known fact for our region that we do this type of thing," Janik said.

"For anyone who has never been in a helicopter, it's an experience that's not quite like anything else."

He said four people can pool together for a 40-minute tour of Chicago from the wild blue yonder for $425, or six people can take the same tour for $625.

Janik said his 11 employees at Sun Aero Helicopters were even more eager than he was to see the finished film with the helicopter scenes -- even if it didn't share any scenes with Batman.

"The only thing we kept expecting was maybe Batman's Bat Copter would be featured in this film installment, since they did have a Bat Copter on the old television show and the old 1966 Twentieth Century Fox film that was in theaters and all of the comic books and cartoon shows," Janik said.

"But once again, Batman doesn't use his own Bat Copter this time around, either. So now that it's shared the screen with the caped crusader, we just think of our helicopter as the Bat Copter."