As a sideline I occasionally fly in the Griffin when I'm not being carted around the Airshow circuit, and have generally been impressed with the civvy GC's at SY. Availability is in the region of 95%, and I for one have never seen an aircraft stripped to kit form for servicing as quickly as the chaps at SY do. Other benefits of 'someone else' doing the engineering on the aircraft are no spares problems of note - snags are not carried, if the aircraft is U/S then it gets fixed with the associated massive reduction in green line entries.
One other thing - not so sure that they are getting high skids!