Winglet designer takes injunction to halt Airbus A320 sharket sales

The injunction request by Aviation Partners on 31 July is the latest move in the dispute between Airbus and Aviation Partners that has been running since the end of last year over the intellectual origins of the A320 sharklet.

Airbus has also called on a US court to order the parties to manage the complaint outside the court using arbitration.

Aviation Partners accuses Airbus of "copying" the sharklet design using Aviation Partners' proprietary information and data supplied to Airbus under a non-disclosure agreement, and has asked the court to order an injunction to prohibit Airbus "from advertising, promotion, marketing, importing, distributing, manufacturing, offering for sale, or selling its Sharklet winglet.

According to online news service flightglobal, Airbus accepted a solicitation by Aviation Partners in 2006 to demonstrate its blended winglet on the A320. A series of discussions and flight demonstrations following, culminating in the signing of a memorandum of understanding in July 2011, which Aviation Partners says in court documents was intended to form a joint venture for integrating the blended winglet on the A320.

But the joint venture was never formed, and Aviation Partners claims its analysis the sharklet design was based on its own blended winglet.

Airbus claims it had been working on blended winglets long before initiating discussions with Aviation Partners in 2006, and the sharklet design evolved independently of the Aviation Partners technology.

Pictured: The A320 sharklet as promoted by Airbus

Analyst Saj Ahmad said the ongoing court actions could cause a further headache for the European manufacturer.

"If Aviation Partners is successful in getting a sales injunction on the A320 winglet, or sharklet as Airbus calls them, then this would not only hamper the existing flight test program which is due to conclude at the end of 2012, but it would also throw into doubt first deliveries to Air New Zealand and the knock-on effect for the A320neo family could be catastrophic,” Ahmad said

“Airbus has been way behind its arch rival Boeing in wingtip technology development, having already tested three different designs on the A320 family, none of which ever made it into production, so this attempt, if thwarted will seriously cripple the much-vaunted performance claims for the A320neo, which for Airbus has been a runaway sales success.

“It's unclear whether Aviation Partners and Airbus eventually come to some sort of agreement, or whether this litigation will be thrash out in courts, but the fall out here runs the risk of Airbus having to significantly and radically alter the A320neo if they cannot build that family of airplanes without the sharklet - and of course, with Qatar Airways being the first recipient of all three A320neo models first, as well as already being burned by the A380 wing woes and delays to the A350XWB, you have to wonder just how much more industrial ineptitude they're prepared to soak up,” Ahmad said.