I’m a pilot myself. Airplanes and helicopters. I fly a Bell Jetranger. For those of you not familiar with that, it is a turbine-powered helicopter, such as is used for tv news reporting, and some police operations. Most of the points made so far against the possibility of rescue by helicopter are absolutely correct.
Thermal updrafts: these would have been so strong, it doesn’t matter how big your cojones are, you will die if you try to go through that. If the turbulence doesn’t tear the blades off the helicopter first, the ash will cause flame-out. At that temperature, the density of the air would be so low that flying through it at all may well be impossible. There is a noticeable difference in performance of an aircraft with even a 30 or 40 degree temperature change. Make it as hot as the tower area was, and forget it. A pilot would be near suicidal to enter a level 5 thunderstorm. Such storms routinely cancel or delay flights. The conditions at the towers were far worse.
The comparison with firefighting airplanes is not sufficient. An airplane handles induced external stress differently than does a helicopter. In a rotorcraft, low or negative g-forces are proscribed in entirety, because it can result in mast bumping, which may well lead to physical seperation of the rotor.
As for weight and balance, most helicopters don’t have much room to spare. Get too heavy, and the helicopter won’t be able to hover. Cant do a rolling takeoff from a pinnacle with people hanging on the skids. hanging on the skids itself is problematic, because it would quickly exceed the lateral balance limits. Then the pilot would be incapable of maneuvering, and it could easily cause a crash.
The majority of helicopters that have any passenger capacity are military, and chances are, there were not a whole lot of them in the immediate vicinity of NYC to begin with.
It has been a long time since I visited the towers personally, but perhaps someone else could chime in: was there even space enough to land at all? I recall seeing a bunch of equipment and such up there. Even a jetranger is 30 feet wide.
Even if all other factors were put aside, there is absolutely no way you could have rescued hundreds of people 3 at a time.