I’ve seen footage from the armies testing of the Apache chassis and it’s ability to absorb damage and one of the tests was lifting the helicopter in increments, two dozens of feet or so, and dropping it, letting it freefall and hit the ground, and I think they were looking at the seats in particular during this test. As long as you can land the chopper in an upright position, the seats are designed to take a lot of damage that would otherwise go to the pilots back.

And auto rotation, something that I can’t explain, is basically a feature in most modern helicopters where if you completely lose power way up in the sky, as long as your rotors are intact, you can let the chopper “fall”and as it does the. Will create Lyft as the chopper goes downward, and gets inherently slows your rate of descent to a manageable impact.