5 Essential Tips to Validate Your Form A (and Avoid Corrections from the Authority)

⏱ Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Properly validating your Form A not only prevents corrections and delays from the aviation authority: it also strengthens your airline’s credibility, enhances your internal analysis, and enables the construction of more reliable operational indicators. Below you will find five simple yet highly effective tips you can apply before submitting your Form A to the authority.

1. Ensure that the Passenger Load Factor (PLF) and the Weight Load Factor (WLF) remain below 100%

The Passenger Load Factor (PLF) is one of the most sensitive indicators for detecting inconsistencies:

• PLF = (RPK / ASK) × 100
• A PLF above 100% always indicates an error.

For the overall traffic:

• WLF = (RTK / ATK) × 100
  If RTK exceeds ATK, there is an error in one of the components.

Remember: your traffic performed can never exceed your available capacity, neither in seats nor in total weight, both for operational safety and statistical consistency.

2. Ensure that your indicators are coherent with the fleet your airline operates

Averages are a powerful tool for evaluating operational reality.

Ensure that:

The average speed is reasonable:

• No commercial aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound.
• Values at or above 1,000 km/h are impossible (except for the retired Concorde).
• Extremely low values are also unrealistic: aircraft do not fly at 100 km/h; many cars exceed that speed.
• The average stage length aligns with your domestic and international routes, in both scheduled and non-scheduled services.
• The average number of seats corresponds to your actual fleet.
  For example, if your fleet consists of ATR72 and ATR42 aircraft, the average number of seats cannot be above 80 or below 40.
• The average total payload capacity (seats + belly cargo hold) falls within the technical limits of each aircraft type.

If any of these parameters fall outside a realistic range, the authority will detect it immediately—and yes, they will send you unpleasant emails.

3. Calculate PTK, FTK and MTK correctly (and remember how RTK is formed)

An airline generates three types of traffic:⏱ Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

• RPK (Revenue Passenger-Kilometres)
• FTK (Freight Tonne-Kilometres)
• MTK (Mail Tonne-Kilometres)
   Total traffic performed (RTK) is always expressed in tonne-kilometres, which is where many errors occur.

Golden rule: always add apples with apples and oranges with oranges.

Applied to Form A:

• RPK = Passengers × Distance → apple
• FTK = Freight × Distance → orange
• MTK = Mail × Distance → orange
  To convert passengers into tonnes (PTK) and turn them into oranges:
• Apply an average weight of 80–100 kg to RPK

Now you can add all traffic components under a single metric:

• RTK = PTK + FTK + MTK
• ATK = Total payload capacity × Distance
  A separate blog article will explore in more detail why RPK and PTK are NOT the same.

 4. If you operate all-freight traffic, integrate it correctly in the columns and in the totals

Common errors include:

• Not placing all- freight traffic in its corresponding column.
• Omitting FTK, MTK or ATK in 100% cargo operations.
• Not including these values in the “Total for all services” column.

 Always ensure that:

• All-freight services are recorded correctly in their specific columns (international/domestic and scheduled/non-scheduled).
• They are always included in the: Total all services.
  To remember it easily:

Total all services > all-freight services

This means that all-freight columns must always be lower than the “Total all services” column, as all-freight traffic is part of that total.

5. Check internal consistency: if you report a type of traffic, you must report its associated indicators

This point may seem obvious, yet it is one of the most common errors:

• If you report passengers, there must be:

• RPK
• PTK

• If you report cargo, there must be:

• FTK and/or MTK

• A row containing PTK, FTK or MTK without ATK is inconsistent.
• A row with passengers but without RPK/PTK is also inconsistent.

BONUS

• Report monthly (ideally), not cumulatively or truncated.
  This allows clear identification of trends and abnormal behaviours.
• Mind the units:
  All distance-based indicators (RPK, ASK, PTK, FTK, MTK, RTK, ATK) are reported in thousands (‘000).
• Passengers are whole numbers.
  There is no such thing as “0.4 passengers”.
• Do not forget to include the month and year you are reporting.
  It seems unbelievable, but it happens more often than one might expect.
• We will also discuss in another article how to avoid confusing RTK and ATK with indicators that correspond strictly to cargo operations.
   

  Conclusion

Validating Form A relies on consistency, technical coherence, and an accurate reflection of actual operations. Applying these five controls (plus the bonus) will reduce corrections, strengthen the reliability of your statistics, and enhance the quality of your institutional reporting. We know that Form A is perhaps the most complex, detailed and labour-intensive of all the ATRs: it requires multiple checks, cross-calculations, and close attention to the consistency of every variable. For many airlines, this process is exhausting, time-consuming, and frankly overwhelming.

At Icarus Aviation Analytics, through our ATRs Generator and ATRs Done for You services, we transform this process into something simpler, faster, and far more reliable. We take care of all technical verifications, internal consistency, comparability, and the correct structure of the form, allowing your team to focus on what truly matters: operating and making decisions with trustworthy data.

The PDF version of this article includes a complete glossary of acronyms with definitions of all indicators used, to support easy reference and practical use within your airline.

📣 Stay tuned for what’s coming next…
In the next blog articles, we will share key validation tips for the remaining official forms:

✨ 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 5 (PDF)

➡️ Descargar ICARUS Insights Series Nº 5 (PDF)

➡️ Télécharger ICARUS Insights Série Nº 5 (PDF)