Ignoring the childish sniping between Wessex and Puma crews, which I thought had died out twenty years ago, one thing I would have thought that would have brought the Puma up to the 'ruff&tuff' attitude of the Wessex is the long stroke naval undercarriage used on the Super Pumas and subsequent models.
I've done my bit. Lever under the armpit, no Rrpm, no autopilot, no tailskid and am I supposed to have the nose pin in/out, brakes on/off. Unfortunately for some other pilots in a similar situation they were not flying aircraft with such a strong instinct of self-preservation as the ones I was flying.
Fast forward to civvy flying. Move on to the Super Puma. Get caught in recirculation, rig turbulence, whatever but it leads to the same thing. Lever under the armpit, this time we've got stacks of Rrpm. It's got a big tailskid but its a civvy aircraft so it follows company SOPs and the principles of flight. You arrive on the helideck like a, correction, several, tons of bricks. I will admit it, a few times, but even after that I have never had a passenger even turn a hair. The same in the cockpit, it is dismissed by the aircraft as a minor squelch.
Slightly concerned you talk to the ginger beers about it. They look up the books. Bitten lips, eyeballs dot-crossing, neck braces? Not a problem. As long as it hit whatever it was at a vertical speed of less than 6 metres/second they're not interested.
6 m/s is nearly 1200ft/min.