Sounds like you need to get your heirachy to talk to "Wee Willie" at "Big Airways",as we are about to stand down up to 6x747-400s on a daily basis over the winter period due lack of punters!! Having helped out in the past with 747s to Ascension,i,m sure BA would only be too willing to get a bit of extra revenue generated!!
On a second point,why does it seem to take forever for the RAF to get mods done to thier aircraft. If my memory serves me well,it took almost a year for each VC10 to be converted to a tanker....almost a similar amount of time for the Tristars and now it seems that the avionics upgrade to that fleet will take a similar length of time!.
Contrast that with the commercial world where "time on the ground=money lost"....so all i can assume is that your MRO in all of these projects,seems to take you for all it's worth once they have the contract signed and sealed. Would that be a fair assumption??