ok we will start with "this is a rhetorical question" and not anything im planning.
but watching the likes of road wars etc. it always seems like when the chopper comes out for the big pursuits the bad guy never wins apart from one time i think someone mannaged to escape.

so the situation as such: your in a relatively powerfull car, lets just say equal power to the police t5's, evos etc. but as the bad guy you can drive as recklesly as you want to escape so you have the slight advantage. the chopper is now above you and you know its on you. how are you going to escape your captors?

obviusly the helicopter doesnt have to stick to roads so simple speed wont out do it. it has thermal camers so turning the lights off and parking up wont hide you.

on one road wards the helicopter ran out of fuel, but i think the eurocopter can fly for at least 4 hours on a tank, so presumably if you knew where the helicaopter had to return to, you could drive 2 hours north of it and he would have to take into account fuel needed to return to base.

only other thing i noticed, the thermal camera has a hard time through trees and obviously buildings, so you could try and lose it in a tight town/city behind buildings but pursuit cars would be close, or try and lose the cars and run into buildings, forest area.

would jumping under water lower your heat enough not to be picked up on camera?

how would you escape, bear in mind your a criminal desperate to get away so extreme measures can be taken.

drive into a multi storey car park ? but the police cars would not be far behind

Going near an Airport would be a good starting place.

would the helicopter would need permission to enter airspace of the airport ?

Head toward an airport like Manchester, through the tunnels and once out the other side head into the countryside and try and lose the police that way.

Otherwise, I would nick a boat and sail to Monaco with the money from the heist I did

Get a faster helicopter.

All the Slough scrotes know that if you head to Heathrow then the chopper can't go near it.

I'm not clued up on police procedure but I think it would need to be a very big priority and immediate danger to hundreds of lives before the air space above an airport was cleared. I very much doubt this would be done to catch a casual thief.

You'd need to kidnap the queen to get a whole airport shutdown

It is possible that there have been many people who outrun police helicopters and never get caught but that doesnt make good tv, so they omit this from the programs (after all we all like the bad guys to be caught in the end). This then introduces bias and makes it appear that everyone will be caught once the helicopter is bought out.

I guess the best way to escape would be to drive the car towards a crowded place (like a busy shopping centre), park it and then mingle into the crowd making it difficult for the thermal cameras to identify you.

Problem with driving to an airport is that they have their own security officers who could be radioed in advance and be expecting you.

Mingle into a shopping mall... Or if your lucky to get out of view from the chopper crawl under a car and stay put.....