Qatar Airways seeks over $600m in Airbus A350 dispute

Qatar Airways is claiming compensation of $618 million from the aircraft manufacturer Airbus in damages over the grounding of its Airbus A350 fleet, a court document showed on Thursday.

The Gulf carrier is also seeking an additional $ 4 million compensation for every day that 21 of its A350 airplanes remain grounded by Qatar’s regulator over the skin damage, which includes erosion and gaps in a layer of lightning protection.

The European jetliner’s largest customer launched the claim in December, saying Airbus had failed to provide a full root-cause analysis needed to satisfy its questions over the airworthiness of some 40% of its A350 fleet.

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Airbus said it understood the cause and would “deny in total” the airline’s claim in a division of the High Court in London. “Airbus restates there is no airworthiness issue,” a spokesperson said, adding this view had been confirmed by European regulators.

Qatar Airways had no immediate comment. The companies have been locked in a row for months over damage including blistered paint, rivet-related cracks and corrosion to the sub-layer of lightning protection.

The row escalated in November when a Reuters investigation revealed at least five other airlines had discovered surface flaws, prompting Airbus to set up an internal task force and to explore a new anti-lightning design for future A350 planes. Qatar is so far the only country to ground some of the jets.

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Qatar Airways has so far grounded 21 of its Airbus A350 aircraft, including both -900 and -1000 models. According to data from ch-aviation.com, Qatar Airways has grounded five -1000s, alongside 16 -900s. The oldest of these is the sixth A350-900 to be built, A7-ALA at 7.23 years old. Meanwhile, the youngest is A7-ANF, a 3.15-year-old Airbus A350-1000.

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