Qatar Airways chief executive officer Akbar al-Baker lashed out at Airbus SE for the second time this month, warning that his airline might stop taking deliveries from the planemaker this year over an unspecified “serious” issue.
“We have an issue with Airbus we need to settle, and if we are not able to settle that serious issue we have with them, we will refuse to take any aircraft from them,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Problems with Qatar Airways would cause Airbus “a stress in the relationship with IAG [SA], with LATAM [Airlines Group SA], with other airlines in which we have a shareholding,” al-Baker said.
Photo: Karim Jaafar, AFP
However, he would not specify the source of the spat.
“I unfortunately cannot tell you what that issue is,” al-Baker said.
Airbus would not say either. A spokesperson for the Blagnac, France-based company said it is in constant discussions with customers about their requirements, and that details on those discussions “remain confidential.”
The warning comes days after the airline CEO criticized Airbus’ giant A380 jets over their inefficiency and operational cost.
However, he said that his dissatisfaction with that aircraft was “water under the bridge” and not the subject of the latest dispute.
The Qatari carrier has leaned on its diverse fleet to keep flying during the COVID-19 pandemic and expects to service more than 140 destinations by mid-summer. Smaller planes have allowed the carrier to fly with fewer passengers amid the pandemic. It has even added a handful of routes to its roster, including Seattle and San Francisco.
Staying in the air has not come cheap. Al-Baker said that the airline accepted US$3 billion in support from the Qatari government since the start of the pandemic. The state-run carrier received its first injection of aid after its losses topped 50 percent of share capital last year.
Qatar is expecting to take delivery of planes from Airbus and Boeing Co this year, al-Baker said, after a strident campaign to defer deliveries from both companies last year.
Al-Baker also said that the Doha-based carrier would be the launch customer for Boeing’s highly anticipated 777x in 2023, backtracking on comments made just last week saying it would not. Qatar Airways has ordered 60 of the new model, which is being billed as the “world’s largest and most efficient twin-engine jet.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day