Irrespective of the cause I imagine there are many pilots contemplating why oh why billionaires and/or their staff accept pseudo 2-crew ops?
I have to admit that several years ago I sat ‘in the left’ to give the impression of 2 pilot ops for a corporate job - but atleast I was an ATPL(H), PIC on similar sized machine and it was a day VFR.
Not for one minute am I saying that the end result would have been any different if it was operated by a qualified ‘crew’ but why would the flight not have been operated as such - for all sorts of reasons?
Are we (the industry) our own worst enemy?
I also hasten to add that this ‘practice’ is not just restricted to rotary as a recent biz-jet ‘overun’ Incident in US has highlighted