London — European aerospace giant Airbus confirmed on Friday that it had cancelled a huge order made by Qatar Airways for 50 of its new A321neo passenger jets, further ramping up a legal dispute between the two companies.
In December, Airbus was taken to court by Qatar Airways, one of its most important customers, following a series of alleged problems with the Airbus A350 aircraft.
Qatar Airways claimed technical problems had forced it to ground 21 of of its 53 A350 twinjets and, since June, to refuse delivery of new ones.
At the time Airbus said the problems reported by Qatar Airways posed no threat to safety and offered to let an independent assessor review the case.
Now, however, Airbus is accusing Qatar Airways of ordering the grounding of its A350 jets to claim compensation over alleged surface defects.
"There is no reasonable or rational basis" for Qatari regulators to have grounded the A350s operated by Qatar Airways, Airbus said in documents prepared for a London court hearing on Thursday.
Rather, it said, Qatar Airways instigated or tolerated the grounding as it was in its own financial interest to keep the aircraft on the ground in light of the pandemic collapse in demand for air travel.
Rejecting the claims, Qatar Airways issued a statement on Friday saying: "These defects are not superficial and one of the defects causes the aircraft's lightning protection system to be exposed and damaged," before listing a series of other issues with the aircraft.
It said it was a matter of "considerable regret and frustration that Airbus has taken the apparent decision to expand and escalate this dispute. We continue to urge Airbus to undertake a satisfactory root cause analysis into the cause of the defects."
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