Small Aircraft
Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Flight Instructor; Flight Crew Instrument
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 100; Flight Crew Total 650; Flight Crew Type 600
Distraction; Training / Qualification
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Ground Strike - Aircraft; Ground Event / Encounter Loss Of Aircraft Control
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Weather; Procedure
On a long straight in approach to Runway XX at ZZZ. Winds were out of the north 350 at 13. Crosswind correction to the left on approach. Descending through pattern altitude adding flaps maintaining center line. Told student to be prepared for right rudder correction to straighten the plane before landing and to add left aileron for crosswind. On approach there were 4 helicopters idling and preparing to depart. Two fairly close to XX. I was thinking rotor wash might be an issue but winds should have blown that away from XX. Upon crossing threshold; power was reduced. Brought my attention away from the helicopters back to the landing phase and I don't believe the student put any right rudder in to straighten us out. We touched down and the plane either caught a gust or solid crosswind that pushed it off center line to the right. We started sliding on the runway nose pointed left and I did would I could to take control back to straighten the rudders and get left aileron up. Student had a frozen grip on the yoke and too much pressure on rudders to simply straighten us out. I think he was also braking at the same time. The right wing then dipped down. We started to correct but by then the tail had risen fairly high causing the nose to dip down and the prop to strike. The strike was hardly noticeable so although I believed at the time that we hit; I thought it could also have been the right wing. I think the prop strike helped the plane to straighten out allowing us to brake and exit the runway. The engine sound did not change and seemed to be running fine so we taxied to the ramp and shut down. In hind sight; there were two options. First was to do a go-around. If the helicopters were a concern; we could have gone around the pattern once they cleared out. The other option was to have more deliberate backup control to force in the left aileron and right rudder while managing the crosswind. I believe strongly in talking students through what to expect and having just done that inbound to XX I felt that he understood the instruction. I needed to be stronger on the response to insufficient control inputs.
Instructor pilot reported seeing multiple helicopters near the runway end and also reported the aircraft encountered winds resulting in a prop strike.