Originally Posted by
EESDL
and woe betide if you want a part or attention during the summertime! The French are famous for it - Gaelic Shoulder Shrug non-pas?
Dauphin MRGB made metal shortly after delivery, Oxford/Marseille could not initially quote - guess what - we shipped it to Grand Prairie and they slid it in amongst the Coastguard upgrade line - now you can probably understand why/how US coping better - it's an attitude thing and don't tar everyone with the same brush, merci beaucoup.
Wow, and Airbus let you do that? When we needed a few sets of rotor blades ASAP and Eurocopter (some time ago) couldn't deliver, they tried to forbid us to buy sets from other operators. We did it anyway. Things must have changed in the south of France.
Anyway, many many moons ago, when Eurocopter opened the new facilities in the US, the local boss gave an interview. He said, customer satisfaction in the US was his first concern (now figure that), therefore they would store as many spare parts necessary, to make US customers happy. Oh the jealousy. That mindset must have prevailed to the day. At that time Bell was the leader in customer satisfaction and it was much easier to deal with them.
But my bet still stands. The
initial customers f****** it up themselves.