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The World Airlines Ski Championships (WASC) are annual airline winter sports contests conducted amongst multiple international airline ski teams. Exclusively airline employees of all kinds of departments (ground staff, dispatch, crew scheduling, flight operations, etc.) participate in the yearly event. The annual championships are organized by the International Airlines Ski Federation (IASF) and are held every year (usually in February or March) at popular world class ski resorts.

History
In 1960, skiers from Air France and Swissair participated for the first time in the ski carnival race in Arctic Valley near Anchorage, Alaska. The races were eventually moved from Arctic Valley to Mt. Alyeska and remained there under the sponsorship of the Anchorage Times until 1975. In 1976, the event was hosted at Mt. Hood, Oregon and has been held in several countries on the three continents North America, Europe and Asia since then. This resulted in the need for an association or federation to oversee the conduct and scheduling of future events. Howard Clifford was elected the first president and presided over the first meet under federation sanction at Les Diablerets, Switzerland in 1977. The federation became a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of Washington, USA on 5 December 1977. The stated purpose was the fostering of national and international amateur sports competition and the development and maintenance of the sport of skiing among airline employees throughout the world.

Rules
Competitors attempt to achieve the best time in five disciplines: Alpine Slalom, Alpine Giant Slalom, Nordic Sprint, Nordic Distance and Snowboard PGS qualifying followed by elimination parallel finals. The Airlines Ski Championship originally included only Slalom and Giant Slalom. Nordic events were added in 1964 while the Overall Team Trophy was introduced in 1984 and Snowboard events not until 2005.

The World Cup is held annually, and is considered the premier competition for alpine ski racing after the quadrennial Winter Olympics. Many consider the World Cup to be a more valuable title than the Olympics or the biennial World Championships, since it requires a competitor to ski at an extremely high level in several disciplines throughout the season, and not just in one race.

Races are hosted primarily at ski resorts in the Alps in Europe, with regular stops in Scandinavia, North America, and east Asia, but a few races have also been held in the Southern Hemisphere. World Cup competitions have been hosted in 25 different countries around the world: Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. (Note that all World Cup races hosted in Bosnia were held when it was still part of Yugoslavia.)