Doesn't make any kind of sense financially. Any kind of lease will always be more expensive, unfortunately due to massive cost overuns in most of the fully committed cat A projects, there is no capital to buy. Hence also the FSTA farce with leasing tankers. Whatever noises people make about the shortage of support helicopters, the only way we will be able to buy some is if Gordon opens his wallet and pays for them from a different budget.
I imagine that if we lose a leased cab, we will compensate the owner based on an agreed value of the aircraft at the time the contract was due to expire (ie what he could have sold it on for when we gave it back).