Airbus shares fell 3% on Wednesday morning.
A field visit to Reuters revealed evidence of damage to some of the two Airbus A350 planes captured during a global legal dispute between European industrial giant Airbus and Qatar Airways.
As a result of the court battle, two state-of-the-art Airbus A350s were idled on Qatar’s floodlighted hangers, taped to the windows and covered the engine.
The aircraft may look like another long-distance flight at Doha Airport, but a rare site visit by a Reuters journalist has provided evidence of some wing, tail, and hull surface damage. It became clear.
The two aircraft, both estimated by analysts to be worth a total of $ 300 million, have been the subject of a $ 1 billion London court dispute over whether damage poses a threat to passenger safety23. It is one of the grounded A350s of the aircraft. ..
Qatar’s aviation authorities grounded the aircraft after premature paint erosion revealed damage to the metal sublayer that protects the fuselage from lightning strikes.
However, European officials considered the A350 safe and urged other airlines to continue using it.
Reuters observed anomalous surface defects on the A350, including blister, cracks, or long sections of missing paint along the roof or crown of the aircraft.
The protective lightning mesh between the hull and the paint appeared to be exposed and degraded in several places, including curved stips.
It appears to be missing elsewhere, exposing part of the complex hull.
One of the tails of the A350 had the Qatar Airways maroon Arabian oryx emblem on it, but the paint was scratched, chipped, cracked and the underlying layer was visible.
On the hull, Reuters observed small patches that looked like frayed or delaminated carbon threads, and in the major wing areas, so-called “rivet rashes” or paint loss from the fastener heads. ..
Neither Airbus nor Qatar Airways responded immediately to Reuters findings.
Airbus shares fell 3% on Wednesday morning.
Airbus acknowledges that the A350 has quality issues, but challenges the resulting safety risks given the number and tolerances of backup systems included in the design.
Qatar Airways argued that it would not be possible to know this without further investigation by refusing to accept additional planes.
As a necessary trade-off for weight reduction, Airbus argues that some paint erosion is characteristic of the carbon composite technology used to build all the latest long-range jets.
According to the report, the composite structure interacted with the paint, which is an anti-lightning substance called ECF, to cause cracks. The ECF foil does not exist along the entire tail, raising the question of whether the damage is the result of the same problem.
A British court heard from Qatar Airways testimony that a similar Boeing 787 did not experience the same problems as Airbus explained.
At a three-day industry conference in Qatar this week, Qatar Airways’ Akbar Al Baker and Airbus Guillaume Faury CEO had the opportunity to speak.
Al Baker advised that they were far apart when asked if the relationship had improved after the incident where two men were sitting next to each other at dinner.
