Dick W is absolutely right. The PC9 was at least head and shoulders above the Tucano in every department (and don't even mention the Firecracker which was supposed to be in the final fly off. It was but didn't complete the required 25 hours testing before being binned). One example - the spec called for the ability to carry out linked aeros at FL150. Tucano couldn't but had to throttle back to avoid gaining height in the PC9. PC9 could outmaneuver a Mk5 JP and had caught it up by the end of the Boscombe runway on a 5 sec stream take off. All it could not do was outrun the JP in a dive. I was very sad when the political decision was made to buy the Tucano. Having said that I can quite understand that political and diplomatic considerations must be taken into account in the overall national interest when multi million pound projects are involved.