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When planes are on the ground, they usually are fully grounded with a tethered cable for ESD reasons.

Its standard to ground out a helicopter carrying a sling load before the load is touched/handled (it may even have a longer grounding cable that drags across the ground as it descends) because it can gather some pretty dangerous levels of charge.

> Hopefully, we never need an aircraft to be fully grounded with a tethered cable.

That’s one way of landing an helicopter on a boat in a rough sea. It works surprisingly well.

Speaking of grounding a helicopter, it reminded me of the Hunt For Red October scene of trying to get a person from a helicopter to a submarine. It always seemed like such a complicated something as opposed to just putting someone in the water to let a diver collect them, which is precisely what wound up happening anyways

My cousin was picked up from a submarine by a helicopter, I'll have to ask him how that was orchestrated.

To me, it's still a helicopter that can hover. If your cousin had been picked up from a submarine with a sky hook, then that's over the top.