Pat - you 'smear' right across this industry with your broad brush response and insult the intelligence of those who fly helicopters in general.
Flying a helicopter is NOT, repeat, NOT easy. Unless you want to describe getting from A to B as a basic means of propulsion.
To fly the thing PROPERLY, requires co-ordination / spatial awareness / responsiveness / logical application / problem solving / spacial awareness / application / spatial awareness.
I believe the only common ground with a bicycle is:
co-ordination?
And all of this just to fly a hughes 269 perhaps. The most basic of all helos?
How many 'normal' members of the public are able to apply all of these SKILLS simultaneously?
I would grant that physically poling the machine once you've been taught the basics - is relatively easy, but flying it in anger, planning the flight, naving cross country trying to DR, talking to ATC, complying with the rules, catering for the weather, day and night - requires somthing a little more than riding your f**king push bike to work and back!
Now comes the crunch - even IF this could be comfortably absorbed by all your neighbours.....
what sorts the men out from the boys (or in your analogy: pilots from the pushbikers), is when something goes wrong.
Don't tell me Mrs Dalgleish, the chaplains wife can cater for a donk stop in the climb out from her vicarage helipad in piddle trenthide at 200' 40kts in her R22
Or a hydraulic failure in an AS350, with suspected fire on board...
Of course, a week earlier she did suffer a front wheel blow out whilst braking hard entering her parish on her bicycle - and stayed upright
'Most' normally adjusted folk could survive a PPL(H), but thats just the entry ticket to a much bigger challenge - and dont tell me otherwise, sunshine.
If it was that easy, everybody with a moderate income would group together and be acting out one of their fantasies - flying helos! They don' t because they can't! And the evidence supports it: If it was that 'easy' we'd have every crappy motorist having a stab at flying and the AAIB would be busier than IKEA on a promotion day!
Moving on: I read a previous article you'd edited and again you misled the general public on running costs. £2500 wouldnt buy you a bloody set of manuals for any decent helo, never mind a years worth of servicing??? Try adding a zero eh?
I say again - promote the industry by all means, but don't UNDERSELL it. Tell it as it is.
[I've got 2000hrs mil instructor under my belt. I 've chopped more students than I care to remember. These were the best civvy street could offer and many of them didn't even get thru basic flying training on the helo...what does that say about your theory?]
there's very little to stop those with poor judgement working their way thru the ranks of helicopter pilot
Really? In all honesty, Pat, where are they now then...I don't see them. They never made it Pat. They either fail the course, rarely get airborne, or die shortly thereafter.