>But the big money comes from the parts suppliers. There facilities and manufacturing processes have to be approved. When they are they quite often are the only source for certain parts.

Partially. The biggest problem is in the last few decades companies have been buying each other up, it's so bad now that I believe Rockwell owns 70% of all parts companies for aviation. Basically, one giant monopoly. Even Boeing has shit its pants and is starting to slowly inhouse some manufacturing again.

I worked making parts for Blackhawks for a lil while, and though there is obviously a large diff between military and civilian, there was definitely a giant chunk of change spent on the chain of custody information, and certainly a huge chunk of the cost to produce any part was in labor. The actual pre preg carbon we used was cheap in comparison. Something like a rotor blade may have over 100 layers of carbon, all hand placed, mind you, and ANY foreign object like a hair or something landing on the black carbon between any layer can cause the part to not bind together in that location. All parts were ultrasounded after coming out of the autoclave and before moving onto trimming, and then finally the part went to assembly. I worked in layup. If any void or any imperfection is found, 99% of the time, the $50,000 1' x 1' panel would be thrown in the trash, not much of any repairs allowed. And while we may not have sold a 1' x 1' panel, if we did, that is actually just about what it would cost to purchase from the company I worked for. Everything was meticulously watched by computers, as well as every step of the layup that I did had my name, date, and signature attached.