I don’t see why everyone hates the Lakota  

Everyone complains about the cost, the army doesn’t care about cost, why should you. Military has a blank check. Secondly, everyone complains that it doesn’t teach pilots how to fly, the army requires overriding the sas for pickups and landings so students DO have to learn to hover and land without assistance so it’s not true that they can’t fly plus pretty much all the helicopters in the industry use a sas, even AE put them in their 40 year old 206s so it’s not really much of an argument. Thirdly, I have over 1500 hours in Robbies and yeah they’re squirrelly as fk, and in my opinion, it’s really doing the student a disservice to log 60 hours in a bare bones touchy helicopter and then transition them to the complexity of a Blackhawk or Cobra. The Lakota makes the transition a lot smoother and is so similar to the 135 that they can transition to EMS in 10 years easier. 

I think 80 hours in a Lakota and 800 in a Blackhawk is better suited to transition to both complex army helicopters and to civilian than the Robbie. Learning to hover in a Robbie isn’t a good justification for all long term benefits of the Lakota. 

FYI I’m civilian and taught in Robbie’s for 2 years and taught at Novosel in the Lakota. If I were still there, the suggestion of going back to flying Robbies would make me quit. Training is difficult enough and I have no desire to ever get back in a Robinson helicopter.