Qatar Airways has announced that it will wait three extra months for its order of five Airbus A380s to give the company a chance to fit the plane with newly designed wings following a fault in the original design, say media reports.
“We don’t want a fixed wing, we want a newly designed one,” Akbar Al Baker, the airline’s chief executive, told reporters, as quoted by the New York Times.
Airbus first found hairline cracks on some of the brackets used to link the wing to the plane in January of this year. Airbus has since had to check and fix all operational A380s for the defect, a $600 million endeavor.
“Qatar Airways insisted that Airbus provide us with the new, certified wing for the A380 and Airbus has kindly obliged,” said Akbar Al Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways.
Qatar Airways is due to take delivery of its first A380 in January 2014.
Credit: Photo by Karl Hab