Reuters
Airbus goes legal as Qatar Airways jet row escalates
Airbus dramatically raised the stakes in a dispute with Qatar Airways over skin flaws on A350 jetliners on Thursday, accusing the Gulf carrier of misrepresenting the problem as a safety issue and calling for independent legal advice. Airbus has been locked in a row with one of the industry’s biggest buyers for months over damage to paint and an underlying layer of lightning protection, which Qatar Airways says has led to the grounding of 20 jets by its domestic aviation regulator. In a rare statement airing a breakdown in relations between the planemaker and the launch customer of Europe’s premier long-haul jet, Airbus said the A350s had been declared safe to fly by European regulators despite some “surface degradation.”
