Qatar Airways likely to delay delivery of five A380 aircrafts until faults fixed

More Qatar Airways flights to be expanded to other international route will have to wait for some time now as the airline has refused to take the delivery of five Airbus A380 super jumbos until the aircraft maker fixes the faults in the aircraft’s wings permanently.

Akbar Al Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways, said that he still has doubts about the aircraft maker’s plans for a stretched version of its new A350 jetliner, which is casting a shadow over its latest products on which the airline hinges on its long-term growth.

The airline had been assured by the aircraft maker Airbus that a permanent fix to the cracks discovered in brackets inside the A380’s wings will be fixed.

Al Baker said that Qatar Airways will not be accepting a temporary fix or even a permanent fix that will come post-delivery. He said that the airline will be forced to defer the order until such a time that the aircraft maker provides a fully certified permanent fix to the wing meeting all the performance guarantees and weight guarantees as specified to the airline when placing the orders.

Al Baker sounded stern and stressed that the airline doesn’t want an aircraft to be delivered with an interim solution so that after delivery the airplanes are required to be grounded to have the final fix.

The five A380s ordered by Qatar Airways are scheduled for deliveries in October 2013. The aircrafts that have found cracks in the wings of A380s already in service have had to be grounded briefly for repairs.