With that horrid T-bar arrangement in the R22, you can still reach up to grab your side of the cyclic if you are in the RHS or LHS or grab the centre bar if you are in the LHS - no excuses.
No there are no excuses, but there are explanations, and there is room for empathy. All non-military instructors will have served their time in these sort of flights. No qualification or selection required for the customer, and in 15 mins you have to form a view as to whether in the last 5 minutes you are going to give someone what they’ve paid for, ie. real experience of the challenges of hovering a helicopter.
I met nobody ever who could manage the cyclic alone in a 22 on their first try, and I had the privilege to fly with some really competent people who picked everything up really quickly. That means you’re always going to be having a wild ride, and let’s face it there is no other way to learn, any more than you can teach someone how to ride a bicycle in a you tube video.
There are rare cases where students actively do the wrong thing, and/or stop you as the instructor doing the right thing. I definitely had a couple of scary moments. The rarity of these sort of incidents (rollovers on trial lessons) could point to crappy instruction, or possibly to how everyone is to some extent riding their luck. Sometimes, as in this case, and in the case you quoted with the Staff Officer, it doesn’t work out. No biggie, no life changing injuries, and one destroyed helicopter. Embarrassing yes, but move along, nothing to see here. Spare a thought for the poor instructor probably near the beginning of his career, who will likely spend the next few months waking up in a cold sweat and wondering if he’s still got a job. If he has, then he’ll be a bit older and a bit wiser, and maybe grieve for his lost membership of the exclusive club of helicopter pilots that have never made a mistake.