AIA Alliance: First & Final Billing^TM Reaches 1 Million Transactions per Month

Dulles Virginia (USA)/Montreal, Quebec (Canada)/and Arlington, Virginia (USA)
Arlington, VA, August 17, 2006 - The AIA alliance announced that the AIA First & Final^TM Interline Billing Service has reached the milestone of 1 million transactions per month.

Three airline-owned service providers established the AIA alliance: the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and the Airline Reporting Corporation (ARC). AIA launched the AIA First & Final^TM Interline Billing service in 2003 to automate and simplify the process of financially settling interline tickets. Since that time, twenty-two of the world’s largest airlines have joined the system. One million transactions per month – 10.5% of all monthly interline transactions worldwide – are now flowing through the system.

SkyTeam, the global airline alliance, announced that as of June 2007 its members would implement the AIA First & Final^TM billing process. “It is about time that these laborious processes be simplified,” said Henri Dillies, member of SkyTeam’s revenue accounting committee and Vice President of Revenue Accounting Air France. “As it makes perfectly logical business sense, SkyTeam naturally is eager to use a system that will reduce back office costs and will reinforce our revenue integrity,” he added.

Adoption of the AIA First & Final^TM Interline Billing Service can represent a substantial savings over previous methods employed by carriers, which have historically involved a significant amount of manual processing. To overcome the costs associated with the manual process, many carriers were forced to employ a sampling approach. Sampling made the manual process less expensive, but also meant that only a fraction of interline transactions were actually processed. Sampling rates are sometimes as low as .05%. AIA First & Final^TM Interline Billing overcomes these limitations by automating the process, allowing a carrier to process all of their interline transactions at a very low cost.

“AIA First & Final^TM has become a critical part of our interline revenue accounting strategy at Iberia,” said Ms. Paz Molina de Grado, Iberia’s Vice President of Revenue Accounting. “Iberia supports this new methodology. It is clearly the best solution for interline accounting departments.”

“The AIA First & Final^TM service has proven itself by reaching this critical milestone. We are very pleased with the adoption so far,” said Tom Murphy, Senior Vice President of Industry Distribution and Financial Services (IDFS) at IATA. “Every air carrier in the world stands to benefit by converting from the old manual process.”

Contact Information:
Claudette Hamel
Manager, Revenue Accounting Services
Tel: +514 390-6742
Fax: +514 874 1589
E-Mail: hamelc@iata.org

About ATPCO
ATPCO is the industry leader in the collection and distribution of airline fare data and offers additional services to support Revenue Accounting (Proration, First & Final Settlement in Partnership with AIA, Sales Data Distribution) and Revenue Management. Airline owned, its headquarters is in Washington D.C., with offices in London, Sao Paulo and Singapore. For more information please visit www.atpco.net.

About IATA
Over 60 years, IATA has developed the commercial standards that built a global industry. Its members comprise some 260 airlines – the world’s leading passenger and cargo airlines among them – representing 94 percent of international traffic. IATA offers a suite of financial services to the airline industry and associated partners to help them contain costs, improve their cash flow and maximize revenues. These services are enhancing speed and turnaround time of transactions. For more information please visit http://www.iata.org.

About ARC
ARC is the premier provider of financial settlement solutions and data and analytical services for the travel industry. Airlines, travel agencies, corporate travel departments, railroads, and other travel suppliers process more than $70 billion annually through ARC’s world-class settlement system, making it the financial backbone of travel distribution. ARC COMPASS®, the leading, trusted source for travel transaction information, powers data and analytical tools that help ARC customers make confident business decisions. ARC is an airline-owned company that builds on values of integrity, teamwork, innovation, cost-effectiveness, and excellence. For more information, please visit http://www.arccorp.com.

About AIA First & Final^TM Billing Service
AIA First & Final^TM Billing Service is the interline billing mechanism of the future. Instead of going through the normal cycle of billing, rejection, rebilling, further rejection for up to two years, AIA First & Final^TM Billing Service permits airlines to bill and settle in one single pass without rejections. This rejection-free interline billing speeds up processing and increases revenue accuracy and management decision-making capability.