Airbus writes off 9-year-old Saddam plane order

By Tim Hepher

FARNBOROUGH (Reuters) - Nine years after France's top plane executive shook hands in Baghdad on a $500 million (249 million pound) deal to sell airliners to the government of Saddam Hussein, Airbus finally conceded on Thursday the deal was off.

Airbus sales chief John Leahy ordered the deal removed from its backlog in response to an inquiry from Reuters about the long-forgotten deal at this week's Farnborough Air Show.

The deal to supply five A310 passenger jets had been on the Airbus order book since its then director Jean Pierson clinched the deal in 1989, as Iraq's skies reopened following travel curbs imposed during its eight-year war with Iran.

The technical status of the order from a defunct sovereign government was unclear, but Airbus has anyway stopped making the A310. The engines on the planes would have been supplied by U.S. supplier Pratt & Whitney, part of United Technologies (UTX.N).

The 240-seat planes were sold at a time when French-led businesses were doing significant business in Iraq, which had good relations with France and several western countries until its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

Airbus was then a four-nation consortium headquartered in France and is now part of aerospace group EADS (EAD.PA).

Iraqi forces were ejected from Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition including the French in 1991. Saddam was ousted in a second U.S.-led invasion in 2003, this time opposed by France, and was hanged in December 2006 for crimes against humanity.

Post-Saddam Iraq returned to the market for new airliners earlier this year when it awarded a $2.2 billion deal to buy 30 airliners to Airbus's arch-rival Boeing Co (BA.N). Leahy complained that Airbus, Boeing's main global rival, had not been allowed to bid for that contract.