facebooktwittertelegramwhatsapp
copy short urlprintemail
+ A
A -
QT-Online
Qatar Airways took a spiralling $4 million-a-day dispute with Europe's Airbus to social media on Friday, publishing a video of the scarred exterior of grounded A350 jets that the airline said underscored "serious and legitimate safety concerns."
The two companies have been locked for months in a dispute over deterioration to paint and anti-lightning protection on the long-haul jets, which Airbus has acknowledged needs attention while insisting it does not put safety at risk.
Qatar Airways hit back with the first official images of jets grounded by its national regulator in a bid to keep the spotlight on technical matters after Airbus accused the state-owned airline of engineering the dispute to obtain compensation.
It has also prompted Qatar Airways to exclude Airbus from a multi-billion-dollar deal to replace almost three dozen freighters, which is expected to go to rival Boeing and could help bolster ties with Washington in an upcoming visit.
Qatar Airways is pressing for compensation of $618 million plus $4 million a day and halted taking new A350 deliveries. Airbus has said it will fight the claim in full.
In the video lasting just over a minute and a half released on YouTube, Qatar Airways showed rows of defects on the skin of some of the A350s grounded by the country's regulator.
Airbus had no immediate comment on the video.
Airbus has said there is "no reasonable or rational basis" for the groundings, which have not happened elsewhere.
The clip showed areas of peeling or missing paint, cracks and damage to anti-lightning protection, as well as what the airline described as patches of carbon-fibre that were exposed to moisture and potentially damaging ultra-violet light.
The lightweight carbon-fibre jetliner relies on metallic foil embedded beneath the paint to help lightning wash safely over the fuselage, which is less conductive than earlier metal.
Lightning strikes jetliners about once a year.
The video showed flakes of the copper-mesh anti-lightning system, which is supposed to be fixed to the plane with resin, coming loose when paint was teased away by a gloved hand.
copy short url   Copy
23/01/2022
4264