Not really. The damn airframes are old as dirt. The maintenance is
difficult even with a top quality US crew. You’re never quite certain if
your bird is going to be airworthy at the appointed time. That terrible
story about the $2000 toilet seat came from the P3 fleet. I’m frankly
surprised after many 11+ hour no $#|+ flights. Do they ever get used?
They get used a lot and we’re selling 7 more to them that are being completely reworked. Deliveres start within the next several months.
It was a $600 toilet seat, not $2000.
Congress had passed a law that required transfers of hardware from Active service to Reserve service to be “essentially new” condition (to prevent removing all good hardware to support Active, while screwing the Reservists.)
Well -the “conformal” fitting toilet seat on these P-3’s, if damaged, was replaced with the closest approximate fitting seat from a local hardware store. Workable - but not “pretty”.
When the Navy transferred a half-dozen or so P-3’s to the Reserve squadrons, there were several P-3s that DIDN’T have the proper conformal seat, and to be in compliance with the law, the Navy had to order several seats from the fabricator. Imagine the cost to ...1. review the contract from the Navy and ensure compliance with untold number of rules/regulations 2. Find and pull out the mold ....3. Fabricate a limited number of seats for the Navy ....4. Ship said seats to the Navy 5. Submit billing to the Navy and justify all chargeable expenses.
While I don’t like the $600 per seat cost - the company probably made less than 5% profit, and had to have all sorts of accountant time and lawyer review time to ensure that they didn’t do anything that might get some Inspector General to come after them for some sort of crime (including laws that they might not even be aware of!!).