The dispute between the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus and the airline Qatar Airways over peeling paintwork on A350 jets will probably continue for a few months.
The High Court in London heard the matter again on Tuesday and announced a schedule for further hearings.
Timo Kotowski
Editor in Business.
Follow I follow
Niklas Zaboji
Economic correspondent in Paris
Follow I follow
Qatar Airways has sued Airbus for damages and is currently grounding almost half of its 53 A350 aircraft.
The manufacturer sees no safety risk in the peeling paintwork, stresses that apart from the Qatari aviation authority, the authorities of other states also see it that way, and accuses Qatar Airways of deliberate reputational damage - instead of accepting the offer to have the affected jets repainted.
In a second case related to the paint dispute, Airbus achieved a success: As the High Court ruled on Tuesday, it was legal for the manufacturer to place a $6 billion order from Qatar Airways for 50 medium-haul jets of the type in response to the A350 lawsuit A321neo canceled.
Airbus referred to a "cross-default" clause that allows a contract to be terminated if the customer has otherwise breached the contract.
Qatar Airways had refused to take delivery of three Airbus A350 jets.
A mud fight
The airline disagreed, emphasizing that it would not be able to get any alternatives to the A321neo in the near future due to strong market demand.
With an injunction, the airline had achieved that the jets to be delivered from the end of 2023 may not initially be sold to other customers.
However, the court in London was not convinced by Qatar Airways' arguments and found that alternative aircraft could be procured on the market.
Qatar Airways has also already signed a memorandum of understanding with Boeing for 737 Max aircraft.
The airline now has to pay most of the legal fees.
"Airbus is pleased that this matter is now behind us and that we can now concentrate on the main issue of the misrepresentation of the safety and airworthiness of the A350 by Qatar Airways," said a group spokesman for FAZ Qatar Airways, who was initially unavailable for comment .
The Airbus-Qatar dispute has long since turned into a mudslinging.
This includes the accusation that the airline is trying to make a business of not taking off the planes but leaving them on the ground in times when intercontinental traffic is still weak due to Corona.
The revenue would then be the fines demanded from Airbus.
Color expansions in individual cases
Qatar had recently argued that, in addition to complaints about the peeling paint, there was a risk that a lightning strike could cause the tanks in the wings to catch fire.
It is striking that no other airline in the world has expressed such concerns.
The aircraft manufacturer explains the problem of peeling paint with the fact that the A350 in the Airbus range was the first long-haul jet to be made of 70 percent light carbon composite material.
In the case of the first generation A350 models, this led to color expansion in individual cases when machines were first exposed to heat in the desert and then to freezing cold in the sky.
In the meantime, improvements to the paint should prevent the problem from occurring in subsequent generations.
Qatar Airways is not the only airline to have found paint defects on A350 aircraft.
Others had the damage repaired by repainting without litigation.
At the balance sheet press conference in mid-February, CEO Guillaume Faury emphasized that he had really tried not to let the conflict escalate and to settle it through negotiations.
What an amicable agreement between Airbus and Qatar Airways could look like is becoming increasingly puzzling.
It is uncertain whether Airbus secretly still believes in this, even though it is Qatar Airways and the largest and longest-standing A350 customer.
In any case, the termination of the A321neo order could be interpreted in such a way that the manufacturer would like to have as little as possible to do with the airline from Qatar.