This is a very Dubai story. An appeal to people with more money than common sense, people who believe wretched excess is the only kind worth pursuing.

The kind of people who like to live in Dubai.

For sale on Dubai’s leading retail website: One Airbus A340 jumbo jet, capable of carrying more than 300 people nearly 10,000 miles without refueling.

All yours for “only” $41 million, or thereabouts.

Dubizzle normally is good for finding apartments to rent or homes to buy or posting the kitchen appliances you want to unload ahead of leaving the country.

Flogging an A340-562, to be specific, is not something one would normally find on Dubizzle.

So, when The National tracked down the director of the company selling the enormous plane, Al Jabbari International, he said he didn’t think it particularly odd.

“Yes, it is a little bit strange on Dubizzle,” Mohammed Al Jabbari told The National. “But it is very simple; it is the most visited website in Dubai. Even the most senior figures in Dubai visit Dubizzle.

“There are registration plate numbers sold there that are worth more than Dh30 million. It’s normal also to find an aircraft.”

Normal in Dubai, anyway.

So, the plane is apparently owned by a “VIP” who lives in Switzerland. A selling point is that the plane, delivered in 2012, not long after Airbus ceased production of the 340 model, has only 80 flight miles on it. “Almost new”, then.

Al Jabbari conceded Emirates or Etihad, the UAE’s two big airlines, were unlikely to buy the plane — though the price is a fraction of what a A340-562 cost when it was new — something in the range of $200 million.

He is thinking it could be a sale involving VIPs on either side of the deal.

“It would be one of the sheikhs or top businessmen in the Middle East who would buy it and use it as a private jet,” Al Jabbari said.

Which sounds crazy; who needs a 300-capacity private jet?

But that is how we roll, in the UAE.

“Be the first kid on your block to have his own jumbo jet” is a heady proposition.