Flight School Inquiry

[KiltedPilot]

As riverkilt says, choppers are inherently more dangerous.
Turn the engine on in a aeroplane, and the thing just wants to fly,
Turn the engine on in a helicopter, and the thing just wants to fly apart.

When I did my fixed wing (aeroplane) training, the instructors would look out of the windows and remark how dangerous helicopters where. Then, when I did my helicopter training, I was surprised how many of the helicopter instructors looked out and remarked how dangerous aeroplanes were. Huh?

Then I started to gradually understand their viewpoint.

An engine failure in a light aeroplane requires locating a flat field with no obstacles close to 1500' long in order to land safely. In some parts of the country this is common, but in many it's very rare. A helicopter needs a tennis court.

I read recently that statistically a helicopter pilot is 4 times more likely than a light aeroplane pilot to walk away from an engine failure.

An emergency might not require a forced landing, just a precautionary landing away from the airfield -- say, due to unexpected adverse weather, running out of fuel, or mechanical failure. I've never come across a fixed wing instructor who has done an off airport (i.e. off runway) landing in a typical scenario (I know some who land on beaches). In my helicopter training I did hundreds of bush landings - it was routine.

When the wind rose, all the training aeroplanes were chained down, and their rudders locked. At the helicopter school, this was the time we practised power off landings to the ground. 25 gusting 35 was stuff of nightmares for light aeroplane pilots (many can fly slower than that, with flaps down), but it's great training weather for helicopter pilots. A great number of fixed wing accidents occur due to lose of control on landing because of wind.

Likewise, when flying fixed wing I'd break out in a sweat if I saw low cloud, or rain, or snow, or other features that might cause me to lose visibility. In mountainous terrain this is a frequent cause of accidents for fixed wing pilots. But in a helicopter training, I often flew below low cloud, in heavy rain, and with less than a mile visibility, or down valleys obscured with cloud -- it's just so easy to stop and turn around in a helicopter, or even land and wait for it to clear.

Helicopter are 10,000 moving parts all trying to do you harm, but when something goes wrong you often have more options to save yourself than when flying fixed wing.

KP