Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over in Toulouse...

It was widely reported today that Dubai based Emirates, one of Airbus' largest customers, has deferred its order for 20 of the Airbus A340 jets which it was supposed to take delivery of starting in 2007. Emirates is taking a wait and see approach to see whether Airbus can develop more improvements to make the A340 more competitive with the B777, which has only two engines to the A340's four.

This is but another snowflake in the blizzard of bad news that is starting to pile up all around the Toulouse aircraft manufacturing house lately.

The next few months before Farnborough are starting to smell like a train wreck in slow motion.