Odd...both AC and Crab immediately start with the person on the wire (they think only in terms of winching/hoisting and not a fixed longline live haul situation I assume) and tell us they would first try to get the person to a "safe" place/situation.
What they seem to overlook is on a Live Haul....you cannot easily jettison the line containing the people....you are stuck with it.
Sometimes I had six to eight Divers, SAR, SWAT, or SpecOps folks dangling under the helicopter.....no way I was going to put my safety ahead of theirs.
Wet suits and cold weather gear does not afford the protection to them as the Helicopter Airframe does to me.
In a single engine helicopter....the most common risk was the ordinary engine failure followed probably by a tail rotor issue.
Crab as usual views life through the prism of RAF SAR and far too frequently lets that color his thinking.
There is life outside the RAF SAR house.
My first duty was always to the people on the line.
That notion began in the late 60's when US Army started using that technique and carried over into my civilian flying.
We accepted there might be times where looking out for the guys on the wire might result in our damaging or even writing off a helicopter.
An example of why we would not consider the "load" to be expendable.
In those days....we wrote off hundreds upon hundreds of helicopters so what was a few more.