PARIS—Airbus secured a historic deal on Monday after India’s IndiGo accidentally checked out a shopping cart with 500 A320 Series aircraft on the opening day of the Paris Air Show.
“We were hanging out in the hotel room on Monday evening, kicking back a few cold ones [having drinks; Ed.]”, IndiGo Chief Executive Pieter Elbers told a news conference yesterday, “when Viky [Chairman Vikram Singh Mehta; Ed.] started dicking around [fooling around, Ed.] with the Airbus shop on my tablet. We were wondering how many of these you can add to the shopping cart and if it causes some kind of error message. He kept tapping the + button until there were 500 in the shopping cart and he went to the next screen to see what total comes up, and if the SUMMER5% coupon code works, and how much the shipping cost would be. Seconds later I had an order confirmation email.”
In what observers have confirmed is the largest ever civil aviation order in history, Elbers now faces a $50 billion bill on his personal American Express card.
“I’m trying to get the order refunded, and the card doesn’t bill until the 12th of the month, so I’m probably fine”, Elbers told reporters on Tuesday. “Customer service told me the order had already been submitted to their fulfilment department and they usually have a 1PM deadline on outgoing shipments, and they weren’t sure if they could cancel in time. Anyway, if they ship our order we’ll have to go print return labels from the link they sent in the order confirmation email.”
At press time, Elbers noticed that he now had 50.000.000.000 American Express Membership Rewards points in his account, which he is planning to redeem for a weekend FVAR category minivan rental at AVIS to take the executive team on a tour of Northern France.