There are so many variables to this equation. More than one fixed wing student pilot has been "talked down" successfully, so this latest episode is not as bizarre as it may seem. I listened to the entire ATC recording and this guy seemed to have nearly zero knowledge of flying and how to operate the radio or transponder. He never did figure out his audio volume problem or what a transponder was. And, just as an aside, the controller did a much better job than the instructor that showed up, the latter only lasting a few minutes until the controller took the radio back. But I digress...
As a fixed wing pilot, i.e. an add-on, on my very first helicopter lesson, the instructor did the pick-up, taxi and departure, but I got all three controls from climb-out to entering the first hover on landing. With the fixed wing experience, a decent amount of book knowledge and a tiny bit of happy fun playtime with some crappy model helicopters, I had no problem with descents, climbs, level turns or speed changes. Not saying they were super smooth or anything, but they were serviceable from a survivability perspective. Of course it all went to total sh*t on that first hover, ha ha!
If my instructor had bought it on that flight one of three things would have happened: 1) I would have got it close to the ground, tried to hover not knowing what I didn't know, realized I was in trouble, dropped the collective to rapidly put it on the ground and probably roll it, 2) with luck, someone would have talked me through a running landing, which I would have executed but still rolled it at the end, or 3) running landing and gotten incredibly lucky.
But someone with zero or very little time in any combination of aircraft, simulator or book knowledge trying to fly and land a helicopter on the first flight: almost certainly doomed.