@Robbiee:
Unless you weigh each pax and carefully position them, you have no idea what your AUM or C of G is.
From a precisionist point of view I agree with you. But, alas, again my imprecision of speech catches me off guard with you pedantic types. Truthfully, yeah, we eyeball it, and we trust people to tell us their correct weight. It's not that hard to know you are at least within max. gross weight and CG limits if you put the heavy weights in back and don't have a heavy weight person in the front. If you spend some time with an R44 W&B spreadsheet it's actually quite forgiving. A stock Raven II will hold 851 lbs of people and pilot with half tanks. With an average 180 lb pilot that leaves 223 lbs per seat. If everyone is under 200 you are good to load however you want. Over that two people in the back is pretty much it because of CG, unless the up front pax is a lightweight (under 150). So it's not that hard to stay within limits.
It isn't a slagfest and pax flying done safely is still fun - but this 'get em in, whizz em round and get em out' isn't safe pax transport no matter how you try to put a positive spin on it.
That's your opinion based on your tolerance for risk. There are many people who won't fly in or even be around a Robinson helicopter. There are some non-pilots in this topic that have expressed opinions that they would never fly on any helicopter. Everything is relative, but please don't assume your risk assessment exists on a fixed scale that applies to all people. Ride concessions can be and are done safely all of the time. Other professionals, including regulators and underwriters, agree that this is so.
If you are operating heavy all the time you have higher collective position and increased Nr decay in the event of a power loss - you have very little power margin and I suspect transient exceedances over the MAP limit are a regular (but perhaps ignored) occurrence.
I can't agree with you more. This is why task specific training in these operations is so important. This is why I wrote early about having to bring your "A" game. And I've been so trained, as has everyone else in the op I'm associated with. The potential for MAP exceedances are the single biggest issue, and as a helicopter owner myself I don't want them happening to my ship either. Whether other op's take the same care I couldn't say. But these op's can be done "right", for values of "right", which I'm pretty certain you and I will never agree on, to be honest and fair and all that sort of thing.