The high court lawsuit will now be dropped.
The continuing legal saga between Qatar Airways and Airbus over the paint degradation of the Airbus A350 has been resolved amicably. The conflict has been brewing for nearly two years and has now reached London’s High Court.
Both parties issued a statement in response to the news that read,
“Qatar Airways and Airbus are happy to have resolved their legal dispute regarding the A350 surface deterioration and the grounding of A350 aircraft in an amicable and mutually agreeable manner. Both parties are eager to get these aircraft back in the air safely, and a repair project is currently under way.
The settlement’s specifics are kept private, and the parties will now move on with dropping their legal claims. The settlement agreement does not constitute an admission of responsibility by any party.
Through this arrangement, Qatar Airways and Airbus will be able to collaborate and move forward as partners.
Months of mudslinging in both directions have been involved in the dispute between the two parties. Now, it appears that a compromise has been made to allow the legal issue to be resolved amicably.
Orders for canceled aircraft will be reinstated.
The conclusion of this court battle couldn’t come soon enough, despite the assertion that neither party is being held responsible for the problems. As a result, both Qatar and Airbus have experienced reputational harm, and concerns about these firms’ ability to influence regulators have done little to foster public confidence in them.
Both parties signed off on the case as a whole with the implication that they can continue on as partners from this point forward. The resumption of the previously canceled airplane orders will be the first step in this procedure.
Airbus canceled the airline’s agreement for 50 Airbus A321neos after Qatar filed a lawsuit in January 2021 asking for more than $600 million in damages from the aircraft manufacturer. As a result, Qatar turned to Boeing for its narrowbody requirements, placing orders for 50 737 MAX aircraft on January 31 along with those for its 777X freighter.
As a response to Qatar’s repeated refusals of deliveries, Airbus reportedly withdrew outstanding Airbus A350 orders from its order books.
Simple Flying has received confirmation from Airbus and Qatar that all of these orders will now be reinstated. Due to this, the order book now has a backlog of 50 A321neos and 23 Airbus A350s, and the airline will shortly start receiving deliveries once more.
organizing the stranded fleet
Working together will be necessary regardless of how Qatar and Airbus now feel about one another. In fact, Qatar has 43 A350s in its fleet, including 19 of the larger -1000 model and 34 of the -900 model. According to reports, the QCAA has grounded 22 of these aircraft owing to paintwork damage.
Qatar will want these jets fixed, perhaps at Airbus’ expense. Other operators with less serious paint cracking have already had their aircraft treated, which essentially includes repainting the aircraft. The impacted A350s owned by Qatar will be handled, probably at a cost to Airbus.
As Airbus has already been putting a new form of copper foil on some of its recently manufactured aircraft, future aircraft shouldn’t experience this problem. This change was made to lighten the weight of the aircraft, and as a bonus, it also lessened paint cracking.
