Nail on head again, Tuc. Of course the old, effective system tends to be undermined these days by things like discovering that another committee/minister/study/exercise/review has decided to close the base that God-1 had chosen and then that the flying hours have been cut to save fuel costs.
Not to mention that someone else has decided to take the procurement of spares 'at risk' and then had the funding pulled.
As for the airworthiness case...