Nick
Its interesting that the current TCDS from EASA still limits the baggage weight to 700 lbs. When will that change? I know you think I have got a downer on the 92 but that isn't true. I hope that you do get up to 1000lbs otherwise that will be a serious problem for N Sea operators.
Having looked at the list of "non-conformities" for the 225's certification, I hardly think they could be considered to be the extensive grandfathering that you originally suggested. Yes it is non-compliant with the latest standards in a few paras, but that's a few out of many hundreds and all they mainly seem to be due to the crash resistance / fuel systems that we talked about earlier. Things like the flaw tolerance and turbine burst protection seem to be covered. So could I say that provided you don't crash, they are about as safe as each other?
Of course as I suggested earlier, creating certification standards and their compliance-with does not necessarily maximise safety in a particular role. Thinking about the crashworthy fuel system, and I'm afraid being rather North-Sea-centred, I can't think of any accidents here in the last 25 years where having a crashworthy fuel system would have made any difference (someone tell me if I'm wrong!). However I can think of several where evacuating the aircraft in/under water was a key factor in occupant survival (or not in some cases). Whilst both aircraft meet the legal requirements, the 92 has very small escape windows (much smaller than the current N Sea fleet) whilst the 225's windows are more than half as big again. My contention is therefore that this single factor negates the advantages of meeting full crashworthiness regs for aircraft operating over water for oil support (unless all passengers are supermodel waifs!
).
HughMartin
Regarding your point about L2 air data errors, this is off topic but I believe the reason why you perceive the error to be so high is that the Area Nav will double any error when calculating the return groundspeed. I don't want to clog the thread with this so PM me if you want further explanation