Is it me or is the idea that the cyclic controlling RoD (VS) and the collective controlling IAS utterly counter-intuitive to everything that is taught in basic (and advanced) helicopter training?
Frankly if these guys ended up in a UP operating the aircraft in this configuration at a point of high workload (IMC looking for cloudbreak at minima), I for one am not surprised.
So let me get this right, you teach that speed is controlled by cyclic and altitude by collective? If so, how utterly crap and no wonder people come out of basic flight school unable to fly properly!
If you are flying in the cruise at MCP, and the aircraft starts to descend a bit, what do you teach? - raise the collective? Oh dear, now we've overtorqued! Oh well, just have to let it crash then.
If you pause to think about it, how you fly, and how you SHOULD be teaching, is that cyclic controls speed and collective controls altitude at low to medium speed, but at higher speeds you must control altitude with cyclic and that leaves collective for speed. Any other way just doesn't work. At high speed the cyclic has massive authority on vertical speed / altitude, the collective has minimal, or zero if you are already at the max. Fortunately this is understood by EC, who make the EC225 fly in just this way.