nowherespecial - this is what I can't make sense of - if a contract is awarded at a specified price based on specific aircraft and the contractor doesn't provide those aircraft; first there have to be penalty clauses for failing to deliver the spec on time and second, any extra cost in training and retraining has to be met by the contractor, not the taxpayer.
if there was sufficient fat in the contract to allow the contractor to spend all that extra money and still make a profit, then surely DfT was seen off and managed the whole competition process poorly?
I get that Leonardos might be liable for some of the costs since the aircraft was late into service but again, this is between contractor and sub-contractor isn't it?