Why is piloting a helicopter considered more challenging, despite not requiring much space to take off and land and being able to stabilize in the air and stand still?
In: Engineering
Airplanes are usually inherently stable. If you let go of the controls, the airplane will go into a level flight by itself.
Helicopters are inherently unstable. If you let go of the controls, you will crash really quickly.
I think there is a lot more input needed to keep a helicopter stable during flight than a fixed wing aircraft. A lot more moving parts creating forces that need to be balanced.
A helicopter does not stabilize in air, a plane will keep its speed to the right, if tilted to the right, a helicopter will accelerate to the right, and potentially tilt more.
A heli is hard to pilot, but an airliner also is.
There are systems for easing the work of the pilot, but it’s not easy.
Flying a plane is a lot closer to driving a car. It’s moving in a mostly straight line, and it’s mostly on you to keep it straight and you should be okay. Of course it’s not nearly that simple… planes need speed to stay in the air and must not drop below a certain speed (which will vary with conditions) or it will simply fall out of the sky… and there’s no “grip” in the air so holding the controls straight really just means the plane will keep whatever attitude it has now rather than straighten itself out. Still, I think a novice could get a general feel for climbing, descending, turning etc with basic instruction from the guy in the next seat.
Flying a helicopter.. you have a lot more overall freedom in all 3 directions, but it’s extremely sensitive to the controls. Holding a helicopter hovering steadily is very tricky, a lot more micro-adjustments to hold them. While you’re flying forward it’s not too hard, but once you want to bring it to a stop and set it down nicely, you may find it becomes a lot more… excitable, and it takes a skilled and practiced hand to keep it from overshooting, start spinning, etc.
In a plane you’re managing your craft’s pitch, roll and yaw using a hand control and pedals, which is already a fair bit. (Also throttle, trim, fuel mix and flaps, but you can go a while not touching those.)
In a helicopter you have all that, and you can also control the ‘collective’, which is the pitch of the rotor blades, and you might be controlling the power to the tail rotor. So what you’re doing is a superset of what a plane pilot’s doing. Helicopters are very capable, as you point out, but one price for that is the pilot’s doing a lot more work to manage those extra variables.
> being able to stabilize in the air?
The thing about helicopters is that “being able to stabilize” is something the vehicle actively fights against and the pilot is basically constantly herding it away from instantly spinning around in a random axis and slamming into the ground upside down.
With a normal plane, unless you have problems with the control surfaces or the wings, it just wants to fly in a straight line. If everything is going well, they are so easy to control (in terms of keeping the plane on course in normal conditions, it can get *quite complex* very fast) that they can be completely automated once in the air.
This can also lead to awkward situations, like a plane with a completely dead crew flying most of its planned route and nearly crashing into Athens after it runs out of fuel circling above the city. Or that time recently when a pilot ejected from an F-35 and the plane went on a jaunt for half an hour until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a field. On the other hand, this also means [it is possible for a complete newbie to fly and land(ish) a plane with verbal instructions from a pilot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbTDzPUDxqY).
Airplanes are inherently stable. That means if you take your hands off of the controls, the plane will return to flat and level flight.
This is unlike helicopters, that take constant control inputs to maintain flat and level flight. Flying a helicopter is like standing on a basketball, constant movement is needed to stay on top.
An airplane is much easier to deal with in an engine failure, just push nose slightly towards ground and you will glide.
With helicopters you need to use your speed falling to rotate the blades, then at the last minute use the momentum of the blades to stop the helicopter falling. A much more difficult maneuver.
The other issue is helicopters fly in more challenging missions. Airplanes are usually airport to airport. Helicopters are used for rescuing people in mountains, medivac injured people from random locations, maintenance of power lines, filming etc. The tend to be low to the ground, dangerous locations etc where there isn’t much time to deal with an accident.
The one thing I’m told by helicopter pilots is that you need a very light touch on the controls. An airplane is more forgiving, but you’re going to have a bad time if you ham hand the controls on a helicopter. Think of this the next time you see a movie where the helicopter pilot is slamming the stick in all directions.
An airplane goes forward by increasing throttle.
A helicopter goes forward by increasing throttle, changing rotor angle, tilting forward, and adjusting the tail rotor throttle.
Helicopters are more maneuverable than a plane, but have many more controls to do that, and they all have to be balanced or you crash.
Let’s put it like this: if you want to turn left in a car you turn the wheel left until you’ve turned how much you want to turn, and then straighten the wheel.
In an airplane you turn the yoke left for a brief moment and then pull the yoke back until you’ve turned how much you want to turn and then rotate the yoke right for a brief moment to level your wings.
In a helicopter you have to apply left pedal to start turning but now you’re also moving sideways so you have to move the cyclic a little to the left to counteract it, but now you’ve got to increase collective to balance that.
The simple answer is a helicopter has three main inputs and you have to balance all three at the same time and changing any one requires an adjustment to the other two.
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