I met the chairman of Arik Sir Joseph Arumemi-Johnson and his son Dr Michael Arumemi-Ikhide, the leading lights of this Nigerian carrier, at Farnborough in July, and good value they were too. By that I mean a good story.
At the show they were confirming and upping orders for Boeings, and talking about refining their own fuel to keep costs low. I liked that story.
Now they've ordered the Airbus A340-500, probably one of the most unpopular long-haul aircraft out there at the moment. It has taken over Kingfisher's order for three of the aircraft as it fulfils its long-haul ambitions.
Let's just comment on that deal by saying Arik will have got a good deal and Airbus chief salesman John Leahy can be complimented on his fast footwork to offload some metal that could easily have ended up as whitetails.
Not sure about white tails, rather red tails - Toulouse did look a lot like Bangalore last Wednesday - 5 Kingfisher A340s, 2 A320s stored without titles with Air France Industries plus one in production, 1 ATR72 in production and one stored with Latecoere.