al@infoswx.UUCP (01/22/86)
Being an ex-Army officer "slated" to go to helicopter school, I think I can answer that from the Army's point of view. First a side note, I left the Army before going to flight school, because after several years on active duty during the Carter administration, I felt the job security, poor pay, and bad career opportunities for aviators, flying helicopters was not worth the 5 year obligation of flight school. Since that time, the Army has decided that aviators are very important. As a result, the Army prefers pilots over non-pilots for flight school. They have found pilots are less costly to train, and therefore get preferential treatment in getting into flight school. In addition, after being stationed at Fort Rucker, the Army aviation center, and personnally knowing many of the instructors, they truely believed this. The only negative comment I heard was "That #$%!@# fixed wing pilot tried to land the helicopter at 70 knots" :-)