A few points to make.
1. High level floats.
A long time ago I got 650 hours on the Westland Wasp. The high level floats were mounted above the doors in clam shell pods on a large frame which went right round the fuselage. The floats were attached to the upper clam shell and when inflated they extended down to about halfway down the doors. The aircraft floated with the water level about mouth height - if you were tall like me. Some of our shorter bretheren would have had to hold their breath. If the doors were fitted, you would have to jettison by releasing the jettison mechanism on the door hinges, opening the normal handle and pushing the door down away from the floats, before exiting by releasing harness and ducking down under the floats before coming back to the surface. I believe the late Ben Caesar just stood up from his seat and put his head straight through the overhead canopy - which had no pull out strip and went out vertically, but he was a big strong boy. When we were embarked at sea we never fitted the cockpit doors but flew with wind deflectors fitted to the door hinges - that took 10 knots off our airspeed. It was pretty chilly in the winter time I can assure you, especially in the Falklands in 1982. Fortunately I never had to use the system for real, but we practised it in the hangar as part of our abandon aircraft drills - with a personal survival pack strapped to our backside just to make things more interesting.
2. The Norwegian way.
Great post on their philosophy above. One of the other factors is that Norwegian law compels companies to have 2 members of the workforce on the board of directors. They are bound by the normal confidentiality of boardroom discussions. Their presence especially in an aviation company brings a sense of realism about what the work actually entails to the boardroom table, and ensures that safety and what the implications of decisions will mean in practice to the aviation operation. I have trained 2 of our Norwegian colleagues who have done stints as company directors of our Norwegian enterprise and whose views were given due weight in all boardroom discussions.
3. Use of 225 autopilot upper modes in low viz, low cloud alpproaches.
The 225 is without doubt the finest and safest aircraft I have ever flown in the 36 years I have been doing the job both in the RN and for 2 of the NS operators. It is so unfortunate that the two forced landings/controlled ditchings took place last year, because they resulted in the removal of the best aircraft on the North Sea for almost a year. I am convinced that had the faulty shafts been fitted to one of our aircraft, the aircraft would not have been dispatched for flight due to our downloading of IHUMS/MARMS info after every flight at which point the increased vibration levels of the propagating cracks would have been detected. The level of precise control available at low speed low altitude at night over the sea is superb, and had it been used by the crew, the ETAP crash would not have occurred either.
I cannot wait to get back on to the EC225, especially with winter on its way.