On Oct. 29, 2008, Standard&Poor's Ratings Services revised its outlook on 100% state-owned DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (DFS), Germany's air traffic control organization, to stable from negative. At the same time, we affirmed the 'AAA' long-term and 'A-1+' short-term corporate credit ratings. The outlook revision reflects our opinion that prospects for a capital privatization of DFS over the coming years are diminishing. Given the currently difficult market conditions and the prevailing skepticism of German political parties about the privatization of state-owned enterprises, we consider it very unlikely that a capital privatization of the German air traffic controller will take place in the medium term. Although we cannot rule out that a privatization of DFS could return to the
