Qatar Airways is seeking more than $600 million in compensation from Airbus over surface flaws on A350 jetliners, according to a court document shedding new light on an escalating business feud worth $4 million a day. Reuters has reported.

The Gulf carrier is also asking British judges to order France-based Airbus not to attempt to deliver any more of the jets until what it describes as a design defect has been fixed.

The two companies have been locked in a row for months over damage including blistered paint, cracked window frames or riveted areas and erosion of a layer of lightning protection.

Qatar Airways says its national regulator has ordered it to stop flying 21 out of its 53 A350 jets as problems appeared, prompting a bitter dispute with Airbus which has said that while it acknowledges technical problems, there is no safety issue.

Now, financial and technical details associated with the rare legal spat have emerged in a court filing at a High Court division in London, where Qatar Airways sued Airbus in December.

Contractual compensation 

The Gulf airline is calling for $618 million in contractual compensation from Airbus over the partial grounding, plus $4 million for each day the 21 jets remain out of service.

The claim includes $76 million for one aircraft alone – a five-year-old A350 that was due to be re-painted in livery for the 2022 World Cup, which Qatar is hosting later this year.

That aircraft has been parked in France for a year needing 980 repair patches after the aborted paint job exposed gaps in the lightning shield, industry sources say.

The largest customer for Europe’s premier long-haul jet claims Airbus failed to provide a valid root-cause analysis.

Qatar is so far the only country to ground some of the jets.

Under aviation rules, the manufacturer’s primary regulator – in this case the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) – oversees an aircraft’s design. Regulators in nations across the world monitor local airlines and their individual aircraft.

The complaint detailed how the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) had withdrawn airworthiness approval for individual A350 planes in a series of letters from June 2021.

It said the QCAA had told the airline that the deterioration of airplanes was “disturbing, if not alarming.” The regulator had also said it was “deeply concerned” that safety could be compromised because of a lack of analysis or permanent fix.

It is the first evidence of the stance of Qatar’s regulator, which has not commented in public. Europe’s EASA, by contrast, has said it has not yet found evidence of airworthiness issues.

Safety protocols

Airbus has appeared to question the QCAA’s independence from the state-owned airline, saying the decision to drag safety into a technical matter put at risk global safety protocols.

Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker insisted in November that Qatar’s regulator was driving safety decisions and that the row had caused a “serious dent” in operations.

The airline has started bringing mothballed A380s out of retirement as it prepares to cope with the soccer World Cup.

Source: Civil Aviation Authority – Qatar