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An Airbus A350 at Berlin-Schoenefeld Airport
Photo: CHRISTIAN MANG / REUTERS
In a dispute with the airline Qatar Airways, the aircraft manufacturer Airbus is said to have canceled the remaining orders for the wide-body jet A350.
It is about all the copies that have not yet been delivered to the airline.
This was reported by the German press agency dpa and the news agency Reuters.
A spokesman for Airbus declined to comment on the case.
At the end of June, the delivery of 19 copies of the long version A350-1000 to the Qatari was still open in Airbus books.
Qatar Airways is one of the most important Airbus customers.
The dispute ended up in court – the airline lost
The airline sued the European manufacturer in London in December after damage to the paintwork and surface coating of a number of its 53 A350 jets emerged.
In January, the airline uploaded a video of the paintwork damage to YouTube, which documents the clearly visible damage to the paintwork.
While Qatar Airways saw a safety problem, Airbus and the European aviation authority EASA saw things differently.
Airbus offered to repair the damage at its own expense, but Qatar Airways declined.
Instead, the airline had asked for compensation of $618 million plus an additional $4 million for each day the A350s were grounded.
In May, a British court ruled that the company had to accept and pay for the remaining A350 jets on order.
In the course of the dispute, Airbus had already canceled another major order from the Qataris in January.
It was about 50 examples of the medium-haul jet A321neo, which is currently in high demand on the market.
Airbus announced at the time that it was canceling the orders because Qatar Airways had not fulfilled the contract for the acceptance of the A350 machines.
According to a court decision in April, Airbus is now allowed to market the machines to other customers.
jlk/dpa/Reuters