Originally Posted by
Robbiee
That safety gain is only for people who feel the need to walk around a running helicopter, not pilots, so is it really worth it?
,...its not like the Cabri is widely used in tours.
I know this was slightly tongue-in-cheek. However, the training paradigm here is that people should learn in a ‘cheap’ airbus helicopters to then later fly in expensive Airbus helicopters. So that from the onset students are used to the CW rotating main rotor and the Fenestron.
Maybe that paradigm is entirely false.
Could it be that you need to train in a most simple, straight forward helicopter with efficient, direct controls.
From experience we would say that the proficiency gained from a few hundred hours, even if it was on American-style helicopters only, allows us to adjust with relative ease and safely to an entirely different type (incl fenestron, or MR direction).
It is not only for cost reasons alone that people learn to fly (fix wing) in a C150, and learn to drive in a Polo.