A $2-billion legal battle between Airbus and Qatar Airways looks set to drag through most of 2023 after a U.K. court split the case, amid a glimmer of hope that high-level contacts on the sidelines of the World Cup might yield a breakthrough.
The first part will focus on liability with the combined claims, estimated at around $2-billion, tackled later. On Friday, the two sides clashed angrily over access to the affected planes with Airbus lawyer David Wolfson complaining with the aid of photographs that its experts had been forced to photograph jets from a distance “under the light of the moon”.
“We do have to bear in mind that this is an operating airline,” the carrier’s lawyer Geraint Webb said. Both sides have accused the other of colluding with their respective regulators, both of whom have declined to comment.