Qatar Airways sues plane maker Airbus over A350 paint defects

In a dispute over the quality of paint on its planes, QATAR Airways is seeking $618m (£456m) in compensation from Airbus.

Court documents recently made public said the airline was pursuing the claim after 21 Airbus A350s were grounded, and that it is asking for a further $4.2m (£3.3m) for each day the aircraft continue to stand idle.

The dispute flared up in the middle of last year and has worsened in recent months. Airbus took the unusual step of issuing a statement denouncing its customer's "Ongoing mischaracterization" of the issue, while in late December Qatar decided to take the matter to the UK's High Court. According to a spokesman, Airbus denies the Qatar Airways claims in total. The France-based plane-maker reiterated that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency has found no airworthiness issue with the aircraft. A spokesman for Qatar Airways declined to comment.

Airbus has acknowledged that other customers - such as Finnair - have suffered surface degradation issues on the A350, though the company maintains they stem from differing thermal properties of layers that make up the aircraft's shell such as the structural carbon composite material, a sheet of copper lightning protection that wraps the fuselage and outer paint coatings. Airbus has previously said it is weighing longer-term solutions, including replacing the expanded copper foil wrap with a different material on future aircraft.

Chief executive of Airbus, Guillaume Faury, told Bloomberg that the company is "Mostly there" in terms of resolving the A350 surface issues. He added that the company was attempting to resolve the disagreement with Qatar over a proposed fix on a technical level, while also dealing with the legal dispute. In the court filing, Qatar said that Airbus had not conducted a "Proper full root-cause analysis" of the problem, meaning it is not possible to design and implement a permanent or durable repair of the airframe. The Airbus spokesman said the company has identified a root cause. In the filing, the airline also lists what it says are eight identified defects with the aircraft - including spider cracks around fasteners in the paint and expanded copper foil, abrasion and peeling, oxidation and so-called rivet rash, where paint is missing from fastener-heads.

Whitestone Solicitors

Rochdale