I've tried to track down what exactly causes heli to despawn during Lance pickup cutscene and now I can share my findings.

In fact, the heli despawns even before player reaches Lance as game thinks that it is not needed just like some faraway random traffic. Usually it doesn't happen, because (unless vehicle is tied to a mission) last 2 player's cars are specifically prevented from despawning. However, the thing is that heli can be removed from player's vehicles list and it leads to a despawn.

What leads to this removal? It's an strange behavior of ped's AI process. Vehicle is removed from this list if there is a ped that has the vehicle as a target and (this is just a hypothesis, but it seems realistic) game can't find coordinates that can be used for jacking it. In fact, it is guaranteed to be removed from list if a left door is blocked. So if you exit the heli through the right door, it is guaranteed to despawn. However, exiting through left door doesn't guarantee anything. At first, if a door was blocked at any moment after entering junkyard (when guys become hostile), it is removed already and further maneuvers don't matter. Secondly, there are cases when door was never fully blocked, but the vehicle is still removed. I am not sure what exactly causes it in this case, but I have two ideas: first, the safe area used for this calculation is slightly bigger than used for actual entering, second, the path can't be created to those coordinates (the way to a door is blocked). I don't know exact answer, though.

So, if you feel that at some point left door was blocked or was in awkward position, you can quickly relocate it to a safe position, exit it, immediately enter it again and exit it again. If the position was safe, this should prevent it from despawing.

[quote]it is guaranteed to be removed from list if a left door is blocked.[/quote] [quote]At first, if a door was blocked at any moment after entering junkyard (when guys become hostile), it is removed already and further maneuvers don't matter.[/quote]

Makes sense. I guess that's why it is better to park the heli vertically like how Mhmd_FVC or KZFREW would rather than horizontally when there's a chance of going to fast and getting the blades caught in something causing your heli to turn in a position that will block the left door even for a slight second.

Other theories i've heard over the years were the timing of the parking and if the heli has been shot at (both are disproven most likely since both these of these factors never determined whether my heli despawned or not). I theory i've had personally since it was despawning consistently at one point for me is touching the surroundings (garbage pile, machine thingy(?) etc.) but has been dismissed since this has happened many times during the tournaments/marathons where I had doubts about the heli still being there after the blades getting caught in something and it didn't despawn.

[small]shit's weird man[/small]

This makes sense for Death Row, but what about Gun Runner? If you run away from your car on a certain distance, it despawns and it doesn't look like blocked door is causing it, especially that your targets are not hostile before you attack them. You might want to take a look at what's happening during this mission, maybe it will reveal more of that magic.

It's possible that missions that spawn a lot of objects (IIRC Gun Runner spawns the faggio brigade) start creeping into the player vehicle memory, that would explain your car despawning. Just a guess ofc, can't really back it up.

Patriot is for some reason unreferenced by game script after player damaging one of Waltons. Most likely this is just an overlook of developers. So to avoid despawning, you can't be too far from Patriot or always keep it on the screen after damaging first of Waltons. If you enter it after it, it can't despawn.