Airbus CEO backs CSeries assembly plan after 'hands down' ruling

[DUBLIN] The head of Europe's Airbus pledged on Friday to push ahead at "full throttle" with plans for a new assembly line in Alabama for Bombardier's CSeries jet, following what he called a "hands down" legal win for Airbus's Canadian partner against Boeing.

Speaking to Reuters from Montreal, where he celebrated the result with Bombardier Inc counterpart Alain Bellemare, Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said the decision to block US tariffs on the CSeries jet represented a victory for "sober business".

"I never heard of a good strategy that was conducted aggressively against one's own customer and that is what I would take away from that. I don't think that's the way to do business," Enders said in a telephone interview.

A US agency earlier rejected imposing duties on Bombardier's CSeries, dismissing Boeing's claim that it had been harmed by the sale of the jet at low prices to Delta Air Lines. Bombardier is in the process of selling the CSeries programme to Airbus, which plans to assemble some jets at its Alabama plant. REUTERS