Choosing a Flight School and Instructor

There are four ways to lose a flight: weather is unfavorably cloudy or windy, instructor is not available, helicopter is down for maintenance, helicopter has been scheduled by another student. If you are training at a school with only one helicopter and one instructor, the risk of being unable to fly is very high.

Helicopter

Look for a school with at least three training helicopters and two instructors.
Given that you don't know how to fly, how do you evaluate an instructor? The best instructors are relaxed and comfortable even as the student makes a lot of mistakes. The best instructors are able to talk a student through a maneuver rather than putting their hands on the controls and "demonstrating". Once you've learned how to hold a hover and fly straight-and-level, take at least one lesson with each instructor at your school and then pick the one whose style suits you best. You'll probably learn at least 50 percent faster with a really good instructor compared to an average instructor.

As a lower-time instructor myself, it pains me to say this, but I think that most of the really good instructors with whom I have flown had at least 800 hours [I wrote that sentence some years ago; now I have my 800 hours]. The low-time guys were often nervous and took the controls too readily. I have flown with one or two really high time instructors who were not so great; they could do amazing things with the helicopter but they weren't good at explaining to another person how to do those amazing things.

One strategy that you might pursue is to find a lower-time instructor who is a good explainer for the lower-risk maneuvers and then do the more challenging maneuvers with a high-time instructor. Maneuvers that demand a higher level of skill from the instructor include 180-degree autorotations, slope operations, throttle chops, and hover autorotations over anything other than a smooth paved surface.