As Airbus, based in Toulouse, raced towards the 50 orders it needed to launch its giant, Mr Mulally was pinning his hopes on a deal with Federal Express to buy freighter versions for its huge cargo airline.
With the shipping industry going through hard times, anyone can pick up a second-hand freighter at bargain-basement prices.
There are characters forced by circumstance to undertake tasks for which they would not have judged themselves equipped: in this case, the captain and crew of a Dutch freighter who find themselves caught up in dangerous work for the allied war effort.
That has meant battling with environmentalists to extend the airport's runway into some hallowed wetlands, so that the freighter version of the new Airbus 380 can be built and flown there (though now the project is on hold).
At ESL's Addis headquarters, complete with portholes and model ships, the outgoing boss, Ambachew Abraha, remembers proudly his days as an engineer aboard the freighter Queen of Sheba.
In December 2004 a Malaysia-flagged freighter, the Selendang Ayu, lost power and crashed into the northern shore of Unalaska, splitting in half in a subsequent storm and spilling some 328,000 gallons of fuel, the worst such incident in Alaska since the Exxon Valdez was wrecked in Prince William Sound in 1989.Then there are the close calls.
The Americans pursued two ships hijacked by pirates this week, one of them a North Korean freighter whose crew managed to kill two of the pirates before the Americans arrived.
The Boeing jumbo was designed originally as a military freighter, which is why it has a bulbous front (to enable tanks to enter through the nose).
Short of news over the Easter break, editors turned their attention to a rusting freighter chugging around the Bight of Benin allegedly with 250 child slaves on board.
Combined, such human factors can quickly lead to disaster.America's two recent fatal air crashes the Asiana Boeing 777 passenger jet on final approach into San Francisco international airport on July 6th and the United Parcel Service Airbus A300 freighter coming into land at Birmingham airport in Alabama on August 14th are cases in point.
On July 16th Panama announced that it had seized 240 tonnes of arms, including two anti-aircraft missile batteries and two MiG-21 fighter jets, concealed beneath a cargo of sugar on a North Korean freighter bound from Havana.
