Nick
The point that that has been made and proven:
is that whilst the S92 may have a piece of paper saying otherwise, signed by some misinformed/hoodwinked FAA guy, in fact it does not fully meet FAR29. The known area where it does not meet the FARs is in its ability to stay airborne with a single-point failure (crack in the MGB or other total loss of MGB lube) and this failure mode has already occured twice. A ditching was avoided on these events only through luck - the aircraft was very close to a landing site. Ditching in bad weather in the N Sea is likely to result in fatalities regardless of crashworthiness pedigree.
The 225 meets all the current FAR29 regs except for the few mentioned in the TCDS, most of which are related to crashworthiness.
Bearing in mind the demonstrated increased unreliability of the S92 critical technologies compared to the 225, and that crashworthiness only grants survivability in a narrow range of crash scenarios (those that would be fatal with the older standard but are not in the newer standard) and the poor escapability of the S92 cabin in the offshore role, its pretty clear that there is little to choose between them in overall safety, and I would prefer to be a passenger in a 225 because its a much smoother experience and yes, because it has realistically sized escape windows.
This is why ERA has decided to buy 225s instead of S92s, paying probably 3 million usd extra for the priviledge, and probably paying higher pbh as well. Do you think that they just wanted to throw some money away? Do you think they are stupid?
HC