News
Thales set to provide breakthrough avionics package for the Airbus A350 XWB

Jan. 21, 2008, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France – Thales announced today that, following an intense,
worldwide competition; it has been selected to provide a major package of avionics and cockpit
systems for Airbus’s new long-range, wide-body A350 XWB aircraft.

The contract is expected to generate up to 2 billion euros in revenues over the first 20 years of inservice life for the aircraft, which is scheduled to enter service in 2013. The package won by
Thales includes the Integrated Modular Avionics suite, the Interactive Control and Display Systems
and the Air Data and Inertial reference unit for the new A350 XWB aircraft.

Thales has been working closely with Airbus on the design and development stages of the cockpit
systems since the launch of the programme in 2004. As a supplier of key transversal functions
within Airbus’s New Systems Policy, Thales has designed its avionics solutions to take into
consideration the future operational needs of the overall air transport system – significant increase
in air traffic, changing environmental requirements and increasing passenger demands.

François Quentin, Thales Senior Vice President in charge of aerospace business said, “We are
delighted and extremely proud to have been selected for this major package, which constitutes one
of the most important aboard this new aircraft. This is the result of teamwork – within Thales and
hand-in-hand with Airbus teams. Thales has invested steadily in the technology that it brings to
Airbus, and in the tools and demonstrators that it has created to help Airbus teams test out
different solutions.”

Thales has made a significant technological investment to support its A350 bids, with the creation
in Toulouse and Bordeaux of simulation and prototyping demonstrators and tools, such as the
Airlab technico-operational laboratory and the iDeck simulator.

Airlab is a unique way of associating Thales’s expertise in avionics, simulation and air traffic
management (domains where Thales is also a world leader). It provides an experimental means to
offer optimised solutions, improvements and innovation both to pilots and air traffic controllers.
iDeck is a cockpit prototyping and simulation platform available for airframers to test rapidly new
configurations and display systems within the cockpit

Thales’s unique offering, which includes capabilities in onboard systems such as avionics, cabin
systems, satellite navigation and communication; and ground solutions such as simulation and air
traffic management, puts it in a unique position to provide high performance, well-structured end-to-
end systems for the air transport sector.

About Thales

Thales is a leading international electronics and systems group, addressing defence, aerospace
and security markets worldwide. Thales’s leading-edge technology is supported by 22,000 R&D
engineers who offer a capability unmatched in Europe to develop and deploy field-proven missioncritical
information systems. To this end, the group’s civil and military businesses develop in
parallel and share a common base of technologies to serve a single objective: the security of
people, property and nations. The group builds its growth on its unique multi-domestic strategy
based on trusted partnerships with national customers and market players, while leveraging its
global expertise to support local technology and industrial development. Thales employs 68,000
people in 50 countries with forecast 2007 revenues in excess of €12 billion.