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PRESS KIT

PRESS CONTACT

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE

www.atra.aero

International Press Relation Agency MEDIACOM Consulting

Route des jeunes 37 -‐ Mail Box 1175 CH -‐1227 CAROUGE-‐GENEVE

Tel : + 41 22 342 10 10 www.mediacom-‐consulting.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PRESS RELEASE........................................................................................................................................3

About the “AIR TRANSPORT RATING AGENCY” .......................................................................................5

What is the purpose of the holistic safety rating ? ..................................................................................6

What are the criteria composing the holistic safety rating ?....................................................................7

What is the methodology of the rating ?.................................................................................................9

PRESS OFFICE........................................................................................................................................10




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PRESS RELEASE : « 2013 ATRA HOLISTIC AIRLINE SAFETY RANKING»

First Holistic World Safety Award at the International

Paris Air Show Le Bourget Wednesday June 19th 2013

Paris (France), June 19th 2013. For the first time, the Swiss independant rating agency « ATRA-‐ Air Transport Rating Agency » has awarded the five best Airlines in the World according to their holistic safety profle during an event organized during the International Paris Air Show Le Bourget, 2013.

While the International Air Transport Association (IATA) confirms a 5.9% increase of carrying passengers in one year with a strong participation of emerging countries (+16% in China; +7% in India), Air Transport Rating Agency (ATRA) is releasing its yearly rating in Airline safety, the ATRA Airlines Holistic safety rating.

The ATRA is the only rating agency using an objective mathematical multi-‐criteria approach taking into account the complexity of airlines safety in order to generate robust, reproducible and meaningful results, without any arbitrary weighting systems.

Based on publicly available data sources, the ATRA has selected 15 criteria contributing to a general safety profile. Quantitative parameters (such as the mean age of the fleet) or qualitative parameters (such as the fleet homogeneity) have been analyzed to generate a synthetic safety indicator. Most of existing safety rankings are based on one single criteria: accident history. This approach is rather limited as accident rates in air transport are extremely low and do not allow to derive any valid statistical interpretations beyond simple descriptive information and case by case learnings, which are nevertheless useful for the aviation community. However, one single accident can significantly impact an airlines' reputation, whatever the causes and responsibilities.

"Taking into account only accident rates does not correspond to any statistical logic and is extremely limited. The accident of US Airways flight 1549, which performed a forced landing on the Hudson River in 2009 confirms that an external random event, such as a Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard, could occur on any flight and has nothing to do with the quality of the carrier. On the contrary, an airline's excellence could minimize the consequences of unexpected events, such as the right immediate decision made by the crew of Flight 1549 in an emergency context, leading to the absence of victims" said Ariel Beresniak, General Manager of the ATRA.

Although the European Union publishes a "black list" of airlines not reaching a certain level of safety requirements, there are real differences in terms of safety profiles among the other airlines. The innovative and unique approach of the ATRA holistic safety rating is to take into account a number of parameters, which contribute to general safety, without being necessarily directly attributed to safety management or accident history.

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The quality and originality of the ATRA scientific multi-‐criteria approach adapted to the aviation sector, explains why a number of investors, financial analysts, insurers and travel agencies use the ATRA holistic safety rating as reference.

The ATRA has awarded the five World Best Airlines presenting the best holistic safety profiles during an event organized at the International Paris Air Show 2013 on Wednesday June 19th.

From a dataset of the 95 most important airlines in term of financial revenues, the top five airlines 2013 (2011 data) from the holistic safety profiles are:

Rank Airline Country

1: Delta Airlines USA

2: United Continental Holdings USA

3: Southwest Airlines USA

4: AMR Corporation USA

5: US Airways Group USA

The full rating report of the 95 most important airlines is available for financial professionals (investors, financial analysts, insurers, etc.) under request to the Air Transport Rating Agency.

PRESS CONTACT

[email protected]

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

www.atra.aero




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About the “Air Transport Rating Agency”

The AIR TRANSPORT RATING AGENCY (ATRA) is an unsolicited independent rating agency based in Geneva (Switzerland) specialized in scientific risk assessment and advanced data analyses for the aviation community.

The ATRA applies scientific data analyses to compute a wide range of airlines data and any aviation-‐related data. The ATRA selects robust data sources and carries out advanced methodological approaches to generate meaningful information from a large amount of data.

The ATRA provides value beyond the rating through scientific methods and validated data. Each rating suggests interesting interpretation and discussion, which generates meaningful knowledge. The ATRA does not generate raw data but computes existing information to generate innovative results, which are meaningful for financial analysts, investors, insurers, regulatory authorities, travel agencies, and other stakeholders. The innovative context, perspective and synthetic information provided by the ATRA help aviation stakeholders to better understand their environment and support decision making.

As an unsolicited rating agency, the ATRA offers unique tools and best practices for measuring and assessing risk in the aviation sector through expertise and experience in scientific methodologies such as multi-‐criteria analyses and data-‐mining. By providing leading-‐edge analyses, advisory services and scientific research tools, the ATRA integrates and customizes its findings to address any specific business challenge.

As everybody is a potential airline customer, every year the ATRA releases, to the public, a list of top airlines of its holistic safety rating through its website www.ATRA.aero




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What is the purpose of the holistic safety rating?

Thanks to the multidisciplinary expertise of its team, the ATRA has taken the lead to create the holistic safety rating in order to provide original, concise and independent synthetic information in complement of the number of available accident rankings.

The publication by the European Commission of a list of air carriers operating in condition below essential safety levels and banned within the European Union has represented real progress. Nevertheless, this list suggests that every non-‐listed carrier should have exactly the same safety profile. This is, in fact, far from true as numerous criteria contribute to safety and no airlines are identical on all the criteria, even if they meet the EU criteria of essential safety levels.

This is why the ATRA has taken the initiative to compile key airlines data in order to assess potential differences across a set of criteria contributing directly or indirectly to enhance general safety. The ATRA wanted to provide the aviation sector with rigorous and transparent information, liable to encourage airlines to track, interpret and discuss any criteria in the organization contributing to flight safety.

The ATRA is thus able to produce synthetic information required by aviation stakeholders: detailed technical reports, ad-‐hoc ratings, specific advanced data analyses, modeling and simulations, accident and incident analyses, etc.

The ATRA is totally independent from carriers, manufacturers, regulatory authorities, trade unions and not-‐for-‐profit organizations. It strives to apply scientific methodologies that can be replicated based on selected key criteria and validated sources.

The 2013 holistic safety rating computes 15 criteria contributing directly or indirectly to general safety from the top 95 most important airlines in term of financial revenues.




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What are the criteria composing the 2013 holistic safety rating?

In the opposite way of accident statistics and rankings, the ATRA holistic safety rating focuses on carriers’ organizational factors, which contribute directly or indirectly to a general safety profile.

External factors such as environmental criteria are not taken into account. On one hand, any carrier can be exposed to external factors in similar ways. On the other hand for example, an excellent pilot benefiting from high-‐quality training at the controls of a very reputable plane operated by a serious carrier, has greater chances of coping with environmental or other external factors.

After analyzing direct and indirect causes of a number of incidents and accidents, the ATRA has selected 15 organizational criteria, which directly or indirectly contribute to general safety. Illegal activities have not been taken into account as it has been assumed that security checks and luggage is under the responsibility of airport services.




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The 2013 selected criteria are:

• Net financial result • Passenger Load Factor • Total number of employees • Total number of pilots/copilots • Total number of cabin crew employees • Total number of kms flown • Overall number of aircrafts in service • Average age of aircraft in service • Percentage of aircraft on order • Homogeneous flee of Airbus or Boeing • Homogeneous type of aircraft • Number of aircrafts no longer in production • Number of aircrafts considered at risk • Number of accidents during the last 10 years • Maintenance expenses Main data sources: ICAO, Flight Global




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What is the methodology of the 2013 rating?

The 15 selected criteria contributing to general safety have been computed to construct one single composite indicator. Most of classical rating and ranking systems used various scoring systems. However, scoring procedures are unable to manage both quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore, very different profiles could lead with similar scores, depending on the use of potential weighting systems, which are always arbitrary and subject to caution.

Our approach is based on the principle of mathematical projections. Each of the 15 criteria represents one dimension, and all dimensions are projected into one or more dimension to construct the composite indicator. This approach belongs to a set of methods known as multi-‐dimensional analysis. Although the statistical processing of data tables and the matrix calculation principle were already described in the 19th century, the development of this scientific approach was mainly due to the work of the French mathematician Jean-‐Paul Benzécri, founder of the French data analysis school during the 1960-‐1990 period. Although it is essentially used in the socio-‐economic and engineering fields, this technique makes it possible to analyze all types of complex databases, thanks to the development of computer technologies. In particular, the ability to manage and synthesize a large set of criteria makes this method very useful in risk assessment. For example, similar approaches have been successfully used by international organizations such as the World Health Organization, to assess epidemic risk and rate priorities for immunization programs (Weekly Epidemiological Record. 2007 May 4;82(18):153-‐60).

Mathematical multi-‐criteria analyses have been selected by the ATRA for the following reasons: -‐ management of both quantitative and qualitative variables -‐ no arbitrary weighting system -‐ transparency -‐ meaningfulness of results -‐ reproducibility and objectivity

The ATRA has developed a unique experience and expertise in scientific multi-‐criteria analyses and risk assessment, allowing to generate innovative meaningful information in the aviation community.




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PRESS CONTACT

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www.atra.aero

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