The late Yorkie Mendoza was the best agent; he could sell a fly crawling up a wall. Yorkie did a great job persuading Bouganville Copper to sell the Merlin III and buy a Westwind Jet. (P2-BCM)
I'd forgotten Yorkie's involvement in the purchase of the BCL Westwind. That must have been early 70s? The Merlin certainly wasn't the right aircraft for BCL. I also recollect a senior DCA officer pranging a DCA Merlin at Mt Hagen many years ago, possibly forgot to dangle the Dunlops?
Talair bought new EMB100 Banderiantes.
Three new out of a total 12 Bandits in the fleet - P2-RDM, P2-RDN and the very short lived P2-RDL, were bought new, average price new around US$700,000. Repayment (to Banko de Brasil) was "subsidized" by the other, older 30 plus aircraft in the fleet at that time. Talair only ever bought two new Islanders (out of 23 Islanders in the fleet) which created significant financial pressure. Limited to Day VHF in inclement weather, the maximum airframe utilization was around 800 hours per year with heavily controlled, often irrationally low air fares. Considering the high direct operating costs in PNG, the income generated was never enough to service a debt equal to the aircraft new purchase capital cost plus spares package. As a guide, the Bandeirante and Twin Otter charter rate in the late 1970s was approximately $750 per hour.