Cool…

That sounds like an issue that would be resolved if more countries including Germany participated in the Mk3 project. Seems like to me its a contradictory statement. You can’t reduce maintenance costs and increase availability of parts if you don’t do your part in ordering large number of aircrafts to make reduced maintenance costs and increased # of parts a viability.
They tried (special contracts with Airbus) and that still failed to meet the German needs. France wasn’t doing too hot either in fact, 29% availability in 2019, that btw, was a lower availability rate than Germany’s pre-Airbus contract. The problem is that Tiger is very costly to maintain, and it needs it more often - it also doesn’t bring in gimmics like radar, its weapon stores are rather limited (best case scenario is 12 AGMs [PARS 3] but that sacrifies utility and self defence). Secondly, that first involved building a customerbase, that is something Mk.3 doesn’t have - Germany knows it.
You can’t refuse to buy a certain European product on the basis that there’s not enough parts, but then run to American products, buying it, and helping to reduce the maintenance costs and increasing the availability of parts by the simple action of ordering their vehicles. F-35 wouldn’t be as cheap as it is if it wasn’t for the multitude of countries ordering it.
Then make a case for Tiger to be chosen by more countries? It isn’t as simple as “hey, buy this product so we can lower the price”. Germany saw Australia ditch the Tiger in favour of a US made system, saw that Mk.III won’t bring in the improvements they want to see, so, they decided its simply not worth it.
As an American, I’m of the opinion that European countries should buy European products even if it is slightly higher in price or slightly lower in quality. You can’t blame a product for not having the benefits of mass scale production if you’re not willing to give it mass scale production.
As a European, I agree. However, in some cases American made weapons are much more convenient (such as the Apache), it’s already a maintstay of some of Germany’s closest allies (Netherlands) and is seeing more and more success in Europe (Poland). I’m not blaming the product for not having a good consumer base, I’m blaming the product for being unnecessarily hard to maintain, which is true of the Tiger - that is also a problem with Airbus.
Like I said earlier, I don’t agree with them ditching the helicopter, but I understand why they did.