Very few people are confident enough to have the gunship slotted. Something that also helps me score them is that I pretty much only run Recon or Crash. Using your abilities wisely, you can get an attack chopper with only 7 kills or so. For example, 7 kills is 700 points without Crash's golden ammo. If he uses TAC Boost and all teammates receive the buff, that's 125 points. To get the attack chopper is 1,000 points, so if at any point before your 5th kill you get the gold ammo, or if you kill enough equipment and scorestreaks (hello Engineer and rockets), you can get the attack chopper and the strike team (which is only 50 points more) at the same time, and just be ultra-conservative until you secure the gunship.
You can also do it with Recon by holding onto your vision pulse until you have a streak of 6 or 7 kills. Every pulsed enemy gives 10 points, with another 10 for a teammate killing one. You get 110 points for killing an enemy you pulse, so if you kill even two, that's 240 points plus your other pulsed targets. You get 4 pulses, so assuming the entire enemy team is alive for each pulse, that's a minimum of 240 points if your team doesn't kill a single one of them.
It's all about tactical use of your abilities to boost your score when you need it. All of those numbers are in TDM as well, you can get even more points in other modes, but the best one is Kill Confirmed.