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
An airplane wants to fly, and, barring catastrophic structural failure, will fly stably on its own in the absence of a pilot. A helicopter wants to kill you.
Less, glibly, a helicopter is like a spinning top which the pilot is coaxing to go a specific direction without unbalancing said top and causing it to spin out. That’s much harder than flying a plane.
Helicopters don’t actually exist. They’re a collection of parts flying in close formation, and the slightest errant twitch can send that formation hurtling apart.
In all seriousness, helicopters are incredibly twitchy to control, especially at a hover. If you think about moving the cyclic, you’ve overcorrected.
In the way of how it moves through the air. A plane is like driving a boat in 3d space at much higher speeds and making sure it stays on plane.
A helicopter is like trying to stand on top of a basketball that’s on one of those moving walkways but again moving in 3 dimensions.
Planes cover vast distances quickly, helicopters cover precise distances slowly.
I don’t necessarily think it’s more difficult. Learning to fly a helicopter certainly is more difficult to do certain things but they can be learnt relatively quickly then after a while flying becomes second nature. If professional pilots were finding it *difficult* to fly everyday then we probably shouldn’t be flying helicopters at all.
It’s simply a different skill set.
Helicopters are evolving too. A lot of replies have stated that helicopters are inherently unstable. Which sure that’s mostly true but modern helicopter afcs is very good! Even helicopters with crappy old afcs have trim systems so you can in fact trim your helicopter and let go of the controls and not crash immediately.
“If the wings are moving faster than the fuselage, it’s probably a helicopter, and therefore unsafe.”
– From somewhere in the US military
Piloting an aircraft is like driving a complicated car.
Piloting a helicopter is like driving a drum set.
The biggest test of an operator’s skill is crisis management. Operating a working machine is the easy part.
If your engine breaks down in a car, so what? Just sit by the side of the road for a few hours. But if your engine breaks down in a plane, you’re now in a glider that is not built for gliding, and your life is also in danger.
And if your engine breaks down in a helicopter, you’re pretty much a falling rock. And you need to act quickly to not be a very dead pancake.
This is why pilot testing is so much more rigorous than driver testing – they test your ability to deal with engine failures, control surface failures, etc. that would not matter in a car, but would save your life in a plane. It’s the same deal with a helicopter – when your engine kicks it, you’re a glider on autorotate. Your ability to survive depends on your ability to utilise autorotate, so you’re not getting your license if you can’t land on autorotate, and even after getting it, your skills check includes autorotate landings.
This is not to mention all the different skills and knowledge that are not transferable between the two types of aircraft (ie what all the other redditors said), and that needs to be relearned by a plane pilot flying a helicopter (and vice versa).
Source: read too many magazines and blogs about flying
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The best concept I had was when I begin to understand how a swash plate works and then you keep in mind that any action is 90° out from it’s reaction
Flight in an airplane means the airplane is continuously succeeding in keeping you alive.
Flight in a helicopter means the helicopter is continuously failing to kill you.
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