That is true- it will not attempt to reload system fonts such as "Arial" again if the initial load fails. The reasoning for this however is that "Arial" would have already been attempted to load on the initial call to [UIFont fontWithName] below:
        
        // create the font   
        id font = [UIFont fontWithName:fntName size:nSize];

Therefore would we want to re-attempt the same load again, even though the initial load (of the same system font) fails?