Last week’s Paris Air Show gave Airbus a chance to gloat on several fronts, as it tallied 58 firm aircraft orders for the week – well beyond the two firm orders Boeing pull in but less than a quarter of last year’s tally for Airbus at Farnborough, England. And Airbus said it remains in a strong position to bid on the U.S. Air Force’s forthcoming midair refueling tanker contract, the London Telegraph reported. Airbus plans to again offer a modified A330, which would be built in Alabama. Boeing said it would give the Air Force a choice of a modified 767 or larger 777. The latter would likely be more expensive, but would be able to hold more fuel and cargo than the A330. Last fall, the Air Force withdrew the contract after awarding it to Airbus, when the Department of Defense found that Boeing had been unfairly penalized in scoring the competing offerings. But Airbus remains confident it will prevail again in a contract that could mean $35 billion of revenue for one of the companies in the coming years.

An Air Force staff sergeant flying a civilian flight from Chicago to Tokyo last month spotted a fuel leak that could have put the plane in dire straits. Staff Sgt. Bartek Bachleda, who is a midair refueling boom operator, had a window seat and noticed fuel streaming out from underneath the wing of the Boeing 747 soon into the flight, the Air Force reported. He shot video of the fuel leak and alerted a flight attendant, who initially was unconcerned. A few minutes later, with fuel continuing to stream out from the wing, Bachleda identified himself as an Air Force officer and told the flight attendant that it was an emergency situation. The captain of the flight came back to Bachleda’s seat and soon after seeing the fuel leak, turned the plane toward San Francisco, where it landed uneventfully. The Air Force did not list the airline Bachleda was flying or the date he flew, though a picture of the fuel leak shows the plane’s winglet painted in United Airlines’ livery. A search of Flight Aware’s previous flight plans shows that on April 18, United flight 881, which flies daily from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo Narita, made an abrupt turn over the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border for San Francisco instead.