In Pictures: Qatar Airways and Airbus do have a stormy relationship

The aircraft maker Airbus on Tuesday said it intended to “vigorously” defend its position after Qatar Airways filed a lawsuit over the degradation of surface and paint on some of its A350 aircraft. “Airbus is in the process of analysing the contents of the claim - Airbus intends to vigorously defend its position,” said the company.

Earlier, the Qatar flagship carrier said it had failed in all attempts to reach a “constructive” solution with Airbus over the issue, which forced the airline to ground 19 of its A350 aircraft.

In 2020, Qatar Airways decided to keep its fleet of 10 Airbus A380s grounded, citing the aircraft’s environmental footprint. During a webinar earlier this year, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said he believed there was no market for the A380 jumbo-jets in the near future. “We grounded the A380 simply because it is a very fuel inefficient airplane,” said Al Baker.

Al Baker said that purchasing the aircraft was a “big mistake”. “It was good when it was launched in 2002, but unfortunately, with the rising fuel price, we think it was a big mistake.”

Last month, however, Qatar Airways was forced to bring back its A380 fleet into service due to the grounding of 19 of its Airbus A350 aircraft, which according to the airline was done due to an “accelerated surface degradation condition impacting the surface of the aircraft below the paint”.

Qatar Airways was previously expecting at least five of the airline’s 10 A380 aircraft to be brought back into service on a temporary basis to support fleet capacity on key winter routes, including London Heathrow (LHR) and Paris (CDG), from December 15. “The recent grounding of 19 Qatar Airways A350 fleet has left us with no alternative but to temporarily bring some of our A380 fleet back on key winter routes,” said Al Baker in a statement. “These groundings are due to an ongoing issue relating to the accelerated degradation of the fuselage surface below the paint, which as yet remains an unresolved matter between Qatar Airways and the manufacturer for which the root cause is yet to be understood,” said the airline chief.

The Qatar Airways chief said that the decision to bring back the A380s was in no way a permanent one. “This difficult decision reflects the gravity of the A350 issue and is intended to be a short-term measure to assist us in balancing our commercial needs,” said Al Baker. “It does not signify a permanent reintroduction of our A380 fleet, which were grounded in favour of more fuel-efficient, twin-engine aircraft at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The issue escalated in June when Qatar Airways announced that it will stop taking delivery of the A350 jets after issues under the surface of the paint forced it to ground some aircraft. The Doha-based airline has so far received 53 A350 planes out of 76 on order, making it the largest customer of the jet.