as365n4
I'll try and make this as simple as possible for you. I think that's what's required. Look at the footage of the Humberside aircraft in this link.
Mountain Rescue Team helicopter training | Border - ITV News
Where the passengers are doing the brace position, you can see that the seats stretch all the way down to the ramp. In other words, they are in front of the rear starboard emergency exit.
If you look at the cabin photo a couple of pages ago, you will see that the seating configuration stops short of the emergency exit - yet what is clear is that the seat backs significantly obscure the escape windows. What is less clear is the emergency exit handle for the rear starboard exit (coloured red). You can see from its height above the floor that were a seat to be in front of that exit (as is the case with Humberside's aircraft and therefore, we must assume, all future UK Sar S92s), then access to the mechanism for opening the emergency exit is blocked by a seat - and perhaps by the chap sitting in it.
I can only count 8 passengers on the starboard side of that aircraft in the video which means they are probably seating two more (to meet the required 10) on the rearmost port seats behind the fuel tank - and thus also blocking the rear port exit and its activation handle. How can that meet with the safety regulator's approval? Escape windows being blocked is bad enough but I accept that they're not mandatory. Emergency exits (and their activation handles) being blocked is a different story and a big no no. So how has this slipped through the net?