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
But who's to say she can't LEARN to?
I learned to fly helicopters. I'm nothing special. I probably have above average intelligence (so they tell me), but my coordination's never been that great, and although I now joke about how untechnically-minded I was, it wasn't without some truth. I didn't find flying easy, but then, I didn't find driving or learning to ride a bike that easy either...yes, I DO remember both those. But it wasn't that difficult either. It required work, study, practice, and determination...and still does. And most people can have those, if they want to.
TC, I refuse to add to the overblown mystique of helicopter pilots. Too many people think we're all gods or super-people anyway...and we're not. It really is not all that difficult to learn to fly a helicopter. Getting out of some of the situations that people doing your sort of job could find themselves in may be. But that wasn't what Pat was talking about. Learning to fly well enough to get from A to B, in reasonable weather, at a safe height, and stand a good chance of coping with an unlikely emergency, is what is required for what he was talking about. And that requires the skills learned in a PPL(H) course. And what's stopping everyone doing one? Money. And lack of interest. And the belief that they need to be a god or a super-person. That's all.