Boeing And Aurora Sue Virgin Galactic For Aircraft Construction Contract

Virgin and Aurora aircraft construction contracts are having problems (photo: dock. Boeing)

JAKARTA Boeing and its subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, sued Virgin Galactic on March 21. The lawsuit was filed on the basis of the misuse of trade secrets from the latest aircraft project. The recently revealed lawsuit was filed to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to accusing Virgin of misusing trade secrets, the two companies also stated that Virgin refused to pay the remainder of the contract. In July 2022, Virgin Galactic announced that they chose Aurora Flight to build a new aircraft that would replace VMS Eve's aircraft. The value of the contract was not disclosed, but Aurora would have made two aircraft. The first plane was supposed to be completed in 2025, but the aircraft work ended in May last year after the second task was completed. Aurora could not continue the production process because Virgin's budget was insufficient. "The Galactic Virgin is unlikely to produce Virgin Galactic's new aircraft, with the available budget, according to the schedule expected to be met by Virgin Galactic," said Aurora in its lawsuit.Boeing and Aurora also stated that Virgin had not paid a fund of 26.4 million US dollars (Rp417 billion). They have provided bills and payment requests, but disputes over production cannot be resolved.

In addition to the fund problem, Boeing and Aurora explained that Virgin refused to destroy Aurora's product information. The information that Virgin stores includes the technical specifications of the plane that Aurora accidentally handed over. "This (technical specification) equation allows Boeing and Aurora to model aircraft stability and control with extraordinary accuracy exceeding what is generally available in the aerospace industry," said Aurora. Boeing and Aurora have asked Virgin to destroy documents regarding such classified information. However, Virgin refused on the grounds that they have intellectual property rights as part of the guarantor. With these various issues, Boeing and Aurora demanded compensation payments for bills that have not been paid by Virgin. They also demanded Virgin to remove documents that are the company's trade secrets.