A few pages back it was discovered that even a large bodied S92 SAR variant could only seat 9 persons in the cabin. How this is the case is anybody's guess and unlikely to be revealed by the very reticent civsar fraternity. From that though and from other PPRuNe discussions that have been had, we can deduce that to put it mildly, meeting the contract specifications AND carrying all the necessary role and medical equipment for the UK SAR environment is going to be a bit of a squeeze for the AW189.
Therefore it is a racing certainty that the AW139 is not going to be able to meet that minimum cabin carrying capacity requirement. So my question for those that know about these things - who pays the penalty? Bristow every time they put an aircraft on the flight line that is below the minimum capacity specified or Agusta Westland for not producing the 189 on time? How hefty are the penalties likely to be? We may be talking about more than just a few months here.