Amsterdam, 13
January
2005
EADS is continuing the support for international aid operations in South Asia following the Tsunami disaster. An Airbus Beluga mega-transporter is currently on its way to the disaster area with further relief supplies and a Puma transport helicopter on board.
Several Eurocopter helicopters are already participating in rescue and recovery operations in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Immediately after the flood, EADS and its Business Units had decided to donate € 1 million in cash to the aid organizations working in the region supplementary to the transport capacities worth another million euros being provided.
Half of this sum is a donation by Airbus to the Red Cross. EADS will give the other half to "Wings of Help", a joint initiative of the French and German organizations "Aviation sans Frontières" and "Luftfahrt ohne Grenzen". This money will finance regular airlifts of aid to the affected regions. EADS Socata has offered to provide a TBM 700 equipped for medical transportation. EADS Defence and Communications Systems is supporting activities in the region by setting up radio communication equipment.
In addition, EADS and its Divisions have called on all employees to make personal donations. The sum of the donations received will be at least doubled by the company itself and the total amounts will be transferred to the accounts of various relief organizations, among them the European initiative "Wings of Help", "Fondation de France" and the Red Cross.
Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, the CEOs of EADS, commented on this, saying: "The indescribable extent of the destruction caused by this natural catastrophe horrified us all. As a worldwide active company, we see it as our continued duty to help, both through financial means and through active commitment in the region."
EADS is a world leader in the markets for aerospace and defence products and related services, having achieved revenues amounting to € 30.1 billion with a workforce of roughly 109,000 in the year 2003. The EADS Group includes the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, the world's largest helicopter supplier Eurocopter and the joint venture MBDA, the second largest guided missile producer in the global market. EADS is the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium, is the prime contractor for the Ariane launcher, develops the A400M military transport aircraft and is the largest industrial partner for the European satellite navigation system Galileo.
