(Bloomberg) -- Airbus SE was given the green light to cancel an order for in-demand A321 aircraft from Qatar Airways, giving the planemaker an interim victory in a heated legal dispute with one of its biggest customers. 

The Gulf airline had asked a London court for an injunction to stop Airbus from scrapping the contract for 50 planes, which was denied on Tuesday by a U.K. judge. The ruling clears Airbus to remarket the jets to new customers and means the carrier will have to find other ways to meet its narrowbody needs.

“In reality, Qatar is able to well source alternative aircraft to make up for the shortfall in A321s” meant to be put into service during the fourth quarter of 2023, Justice David Waksman said in handing down the ruling.

The tussle over the A321 order is part of a larger court battle over flaking paint on Airbus’s A350 widebody planes. The cancelation of the A321 order in January shocked the industry, and showed how badly relations between the manufacturer and one of its most important customers had soured over the course of the argument.

Lawyers for Airbus had argued the planemaker has the right to cancel the contract under a clause due to the airline’s failure to accept delivery of A350s. They also said relations between the parties have broken down to such an extent it would be wrong to force them to work together.

Qatar countered that there’s no obligation to accept the A350s, which it says are defective, and the A321 cancellation was “misguided and legally invalid.” 

The court previously told Airbus not to allocate the A321s to other customers until a decision had been reached on whether to allow the deal to be annulled. The judge considered the inconvenience to either side of scrapping or reinstating the contract, as well as the uniqueness of the product on offer. 

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