The head of Qatar Airways on Tuesday called on Airbus to admit that it had a problem with flaws on the surface of its A350 jets and ruled out buying freighter planes from the European company, effectively handing a potential deal to Boeing. CE Akbar Al Baker confirmed that the Gulf airline had grounded 20 of the long-range A350 jets in a months-long dispute over paint and other surface damage that has also prompted the airline to halt further deliveries. "Qatar Airways cannot sit with its arms folded and legs crossed. We need to solve it. Airbus has made a very large dent in our widebody operations," Al Baker said. "It is a serious matter; we don't know if it is an airworthiness issue; we also don't know that it is not an airworthiness issue. The real cause of it has not been established by Airbus," he told The Aviation Club in London. "Now they have, at last, accepted that there are other airlines, several of them that have the same condition." A Reuters investigation published on Monday found that at least five other airlines had raised concerns over surface flaws since the A350 entered service and that in at some cases damage extended below paint to a layer of lightning protection. Airbus, which until recently maintained that the problem was confined to Qatar Airways, has said the plane is safe and that it understands the root cause of the problem. read more An Airbus spokesperson said it had nothing to add to earlier statements. Story has more.<br/>
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Qantas is embarking on a second online frequent flyer points auction, with items such as second-hand A380 seats, and experiences including a five-star dining experience at Qantas’ Sydney first class lounge up for grabs. Over the next nine days, Qantas will send 10 items and experiences in total to auction, with Qantas frequent flyers free to use up some of their saved-up points on luxurious experiences, holidays and money-can’t-buy collectable items. As borders finally begin to open, this round of the points auction also includes flights and holiday experiences, such as a ski trip to Whistler in Canada, an eight-night stay in London and a private jet trip to Hamilton Island. Meanwhile, a four-night luxurious experience in South Australia is the first prize to go under the hammer, with the auction kicking off on Wednesday morning. Qantas Loyalty CEO Olivia Wirth said that the second points auction comes after strong demand from members “looking for unique ways to use their points”, and high interest in Qantas’ first points auction earlier this year. “The response from our first points auction was phenomenal,” Wirth said. “We saw tens of thousands of visitors to the auction site with our frequent flyers really embracing the opportunity to use their points to treat themselves and their loved ones to once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”<br/>
A British aerospace engineer claims to have cracked one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time: the final resting place of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Richard Godfrey, a founding member of the non-government MH370 independent Group, on Wednesday said he was very confident new mapping technology had pinpointed the passenger plane’s crash site 2000km west of Perth in the southern Indian Ocean. MH370 went missing on March 8 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with six Australians among the 239 people on board. The disappearance nearly eight years ago kicked off one of the most extensive aviation searches in history and has generated a range of theories as to where it ended up, and what happened on board. New, publicly available technology may have provided an answer. Using software based on ‘weak signal propagation’ data, Mr Godfrey’s new report says the craft should be resting about 4km under the sea in a mountainous region of the southern Indian Ocean that had been missed by previous search attempts. Taken together with satellite, weather, ocean current, and aeroplane performance data, Godfrey said the new technology should trigger a fresh search. “(The) data supports an overwhelming case for a renewed search in the prime crash location of 33.177°S 95.300°E,” he said. “The proposed search area is defined by a circle with a radius of 40 nautical miles centred on the prime crash location.” Story has more.<br/>