Originally Posted by
Thomas coupling
The a/c never got off the starting blocks because of spares and reliability issues and only a few slipped past the politicians to replace the knackered old labrador. It cost the Canadian public a massive fortune in penalty payments.
That's where your timings are wrong. No aircraft were in service ANYWHERE at the time of cancellation, and any spares and reliability issues (addressed in my last post) lay well in the future - like a decade or so and in relation to a different procurement programme, and so is irrelevant in terms of the Chimo/Petrel cancellation, which was a political decision hiding behind a financial one. So yes, it was cancelled in 1993, but there were no reliability or spares aspects to it.