Understanding Risk Management in Airlines during the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Airline Example in Turkey

The aim of this thesis is to determine the financial and operational risks faced by airline companies during the Covid 19 pandemic period and to examine the results of the financial indicators corresponding to these risks reflected in the financial performance. The Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected the aviation industry on a global scale. Since intercontinental flights pave the way for individuals carrying the virus to carry the virus to other regions and accelerate its spread in these regions, airline companies have limited their flights, operated only when necessary, and even stopped their flights completely for a period. Airline companies encountered many problems not only during the months when the pandemic was declared, but also during the gradual normalization and afterwards. All developments have pointed out that airline companies face various financial and operational risks. Investigating the risks faced by Turkish Airlines (THY), which has been actively operating in the airline industry in our country from the beginning to the end of the pandemic period (between 2020-2022), and the activities reflected in the financial performance in the process of managing these risks, is in order to understand both the literature and the crisis management in the sector. THY's global total passenger-seat capacity, number of aircraft, domestic and international passenger market share development rate, scope of geographical operation area, and working with different business models were the determining criteria in selecting the case. The research question required the evaluation of data collected from secondary sources with statistical methods and document analysis. In this context, the Board of Directors Activity Reports for the years 2019-2022 on the official website of THY, which were selected as examples in the thesis, were used. Between the passenger trips, number of seats, paid passenger km, passenger occupancy rate, number of passengers and cargo data of the operational risks included in the reports, liquidity risk and exchange rate risk data of financial risks, and asset profitability, operating profitability and financial leverage data of financial performance indicators. The relationships were evaluated by ratio analysis. In the next stage of the research, quantitative findings were tried to be interpreted through document analysis.