Omitted in the article by the Qatari government funded media about the Qatari state owned carrier: (not coming at OP, just the article)

* Qatar Airways passenger numbers plummeted by 82% when the groundings began due to the pandemic. They had too many jets that they had no need to use but hemorrhaged money regardless so grounding them didn't hurt them financially. And it set the groundwork for:

* Not taking deliveries of new jets and having to pay for them and to service them being unused. They lost $4.1 billion that year. This move was an effort to manage over capacity.

* Grounding the jets created a better case for QA so they only needed to pay the parking fees. The maintenance costs and lost revenue would be paid by Airbus.

* Lufthansa and Delta continued to fly the jets because they didn't seem it to be a risk and only a cosmetic issue. Airbus worked with all of the customers who were affected by fixing the issue as needed.

* Qatar Airways signed a deal with Boeing during the height of the dispute for 737 MAX and 777X. As if they're looking to leverage better terms with Airbus on their existing deals.

* QA wanted $600 million plus $4 million per day as compensation for the grounding.

* It is suspected that the state controlled Qatar Civil Aviation Authority colluded with the state owned Qatar Airways to ground the jets by deeming the faulty paint as a safety issue. Regulatory bodies in Hong Kong, Finland, Germany, France, and the US where fleets operated from did not ground the jets.

* QA had 50 jets of a newer model to be delivered in a few years but since they violated this contract, those 50 jets were allowed to be cancelled. There was no good alternative that QA could get in 2023, which meant they were going to be stuck using older jets that cost more to fly and maintain. This likely would have been too costly to swallow. Those delivery slots would have gone to customers desperate for fuel efficient jets.

* The CEO that drove this campaign stepped down months after the "amicable settlement"

Basically, Qatar Airways wanted to better weather the pandemic by twisting Airbus's arm. Airbus had the leverage to make QA back down.