Qatar Airways: Canadian planemaker on hold

Qatar Airways said on Monday it had put on hold negotiations with Canadian planemaker Bombardier over the purchase of its new CSeries craft as the airline deals with other issues. Chief executive Akbar Al Baker said company personnel had their hands full with other programmes and that talks could resume in six months to a year. "We are very busy so we have, at the moment, delayed our further negotiations with them (Bombardier) for the Cseries," he told a conference at the European Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Geneva. Pointing to discussions on the Airbus A320 neo, the A350 and the A380, he said: "We have limited resources ...they are experts and we want to make sure they do things in an absolute perfect manner." The new Cseries range, which will enter into service in 2013, will be able to carry more than 100 passengers and compete with the medium-range single-aisle carriers of Airbus and Boeing. On the subject of the A380, Baker did not hide his discontent over cracks found recently in the wing components of the super jumbo. Qatar Airways will not settle for an aircraft with a temporary solution, he told the conference, adding that Airbus had confirmed that it would deliver the planes in October next year as scheduled. In February the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) ordered all A380 planes to be checked and Airbus has assured that it is working on a permanent solution. Qatar Airways has meanwhile signed a commercial agreement with Flexijet, Bombardier's business branch, serving to open up connections with North America.