Aviation Partners Addresses Airbus Lawsuit

SEATTLE, December 8, 2011 -

- Attribute the following statement to Joe Clark, founder and chief executive officer, Aviation Partners Inc.

Joe Clark, founder  and CEO of Aviation Partners, said today that “We are certainly surprised by the lawsuit attempting to invalidate our patent on Blended Winglets after working closely with Airbus over the past five years.  We have had many meetings with their engineering group and top executives, both in America and Europe.

“We have built and flown patented Blended Winglets on the Airbus A320 in Toulouse.  We have flown them on one of JetBlue’s A320s using JetBlue flight crews with excellent results achieved - a 5 percent fuel savings - all of this with the cooperation of Airbus.

“What I can tell you is that we will vigorously protect our patented technology and intellectual property, which is currently saving the world billions of gallons of fuel on Boeing, Dassault, Hawker, and Gulfstream airplanes.

“This is all about efficiency. We want to get our Blended Winglet technology on as many airplanes as possible to save as much fuel as possible.  We are just trying to do our part in a changing world.”

Aviation Partners, Inc.

Seattle, Washington based Aviation Partners, Inc. (API) is the world leader in advanced Winglet technology.  API’s patented Performance Enhancing Blended Winglets have been designed and certified for a number of commercial and business aircraft; applications include Boeing, Dassault, Hawker, and Gulfstream airframes.  More than 4,800 in-service aircraft have saved and estimated 2.9 billion gallons of fuel.  In addition to the 5 - 7 percent improvement in fuel burn, Blended Winglets have reduced global CO2 emissions by more than 31 million tons.  Additional airframe programs are in development for existing Blended Winglet technology, and future Winglet designs will lead to greater incremental improvements in performance, fuel savings and emissions reductions.  www.aviationpartners.com

Joel VanEtta or David Marriott, +1-206-292-3000