Airbus claims US$220m from Qatar in legal spat over paint

[LONDON] Airbus SE asked a London court to grant it more than US$220 million as a legal dispute with customer Qatar Airways continues to escalate.

The planemaker said in documents made public on Monday (Feb 28) that it is entitled to compensation for the airline's refusal to accept two A350 aircraft that were tendered for delivery. While Airbus would ordinarily be able to resell the aircraft, it has agreed not to do this while the court decides on an injunction filed by Qatar to prevent the contracts being cancelled.

The battle between the aircraft manufacturer and one of its biggest customers is playing out in court after Qatar sued Airbus late last year over surface paint defects with its A350 widebody jets.

The planemaker responded by cancelling two A350s due for delivery and a separate contract for its popular A321s, both of which are now caught up in separate legal proceedings as Qatar seeks to block the cancellations.

Airbus repeated claims that the surface issues with the A350 don't affect the airworthiness of the aircraft. It said Qatar has rejected proposed repairs, including restoring a layer of expanded copper foil, repainting the affected surface and inserting fibreglass between the window frame resin and the paint to prevent the spread of cracks.

The manufacturer acknowledges that the problem first came to light when a Qatar Airways A350 was in Shannon, Ireland, to be repainted in football World Cup livery in late 2020. But it says Qatar's chemical paint stripping "went beyond Airbus' recommendations" and was partly or largely responsible for the subsequent problems with that aircraft. Airbus also denies Qatar's claim that it has not done a full analysis of the cause of the A350 issues. It says it put in place a number of teams to look at the issue, including engineering, manufacturing and paint and provided the results to Qatar between Jan 29 and July 2 last year.

Qatar said in a statement that it has grounded another A350 to take the total number of idled planes to 22. It reiterated the call for a full root cause analysis of the problem, and pushed back against Airbus' claim that it has been trying to resolve the issue.

"Neither Qatar Airways nor its legal team are aware of any efforts by Airbus to try to resolve the situation in an amicable way," the airline said. "In fact, the actual situation is to the contrary."

BLOOMBERG