5 Essential Tips to Validate Your ATRs (Form A and Form B)
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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
In many airlines, the preparation of ATRs remains a tedious, manual, and error-prone process: duplicated figures, miscounted traffic, incorrect units, or indicators that simply do not reconcile across forms.
The key point —and the main takeaway— is that the forms are designed to function as an internal quality-control system:
Form A and Form B must reconcile with each other.
If they do not match → there is an error at the source of your report.
Based on more than a decade of analysing and validating traffic statistics, here are 5 essential tips to validate your ATRs before submitting them to the authority
1. Passengers and cargo in Form B must match those in Form A
Form B reports international passengers, cargo, and mail by origin and destination (O&D), in both scheduled and non-scheduled services.
Form A reports totals by type of service and flight stage.
✔ The sum of international passengers and mail in Form B must match the international total in Form A.
✔ This applies to both scheduled and non-scheduled services.
If they do not match → traffic is being omitted or misclassified.
2. The official source of traffic is the flight coupon and the air waybill
All passengers, cargo, and mail in Form B must be based strictly on:
• Flight coupon (for passengers)
• Air Waybill (AWB) (for cargo and mail)
This ensures that Form A and Form B are fed from the same operational source.
3. How to know if you are miscounting passengers or cargo
A simple check eliminates most errors:
• If Form B < Form A
→ You are missing connecting passengers.
• If Form B > Form A
→ You are reporting traffic by flight stage, not O&D.
This single step removes more than 70% of typical errors.
4. Review the growth rates in Form B
Compare each quarter with the same quarter of the previous year:
• Sudden drops → possible under-reporting
• Excessive increases → double counting or stage-based reporting
• Cargo rising while passengers fall → check category or flight type
This check detects anomalies without having to review every single flight one by one
5. Ensure passenger and cargo traffic is consistent between Form A and Form B
A very common mistake:
➡️ Reporting passengers and cargo in Form A,
but only reporting passengers in Form B.
This breaks consistency, affects international totals, and produces biased quarterly analysis.
• If Form A reports international passengers and cargo, Form B must include both.
• Otherwise, the data set becomes incomplete and distorts the real traffic picture.
Extra tip 💡
• Scheduled traffic should show reasonably stable patterns.
• Non-scheduled traffic may vary, but it should never exceed the operational capacities reported.
This alignment ensures consistency across forms.
Conclusion
Validating ATRs does not need to be exhausting.
With these 5 checks, you can detect most inconsistencies before submitting your reports.
And if you want reliable, coherent results based on international standard methodology, your best allies are:
✔ ATRs Generator Tool
Automates Forms A and B with built-in controls, standardised calculations, and automatic cross-validation.
✔ ATRs Done-for-You
Completed, audited, and perfectly consistent forms — ready to submit.
No reprocessing. No stress. No errors.
📣 Stay tuned for what’s coming next…
In the next blog articles, we will share key validation tips for the remaining official forms:
✨ Form A
✨ Form C
✨ Form D
A complete, practical guide to ensure your entire statistical operation is coherent, aligned, and 100% error-free.
Visit our website, book a video call, or send us an email — we’d love to hear from you!
➡️ Download the ICARUS Insights Series Nº 4 (PDF)