Phew!!
Good post Current Limiter!
Gravitysux, you have missed the point entirely! Good business is when the distributor assists the customer to get the contract and offers an aircraft for all the reasons that you gave, to make a sale. When the contract operator IS the distributor and is taking work away from the Raytheon customer, then that is unethical, unfair and I could go on quoting the above attachment.
This saga looks more and more interesting by the minute! Raytheon must look at their Danish and South African/UK distributors for a start. What they have posted on their website as a code of conduct and how they say they expect their distributors in the field to operate are very far apart.
Not a difficult case for a jury to decide on, should a class action suit be filed if some of the affected operators got together on this score. Balmoral, I am sure are not the only victims.