Geoff,
I'm going to call your hand on this one:
Once again I quote the stats - people have died in floatless ditchings (that is to say they were fitted and automated but were not armed)
Can you back up your statement and give details of "ditchings" involving an aircraft equipped with
automatic flotation inflation equipment that was not armed and that cost lives?
I would counter your potentially "luddite" position (your word, not mine), in that there have been a number of inflight inflations involving automated systems that I know of. (332 during the early days of the BHL system and more recently an S92)
If the AW139 was subject to initial FAA certification it would have had to do an inflight inflation. Lucky for Agusta they only had to deal with ENAC
