A research on competitive strategies of private airlines operating in Turkey

Although air transport is one of the most important and strategic industries in terms of Turkey's economy and tourism sector and has very critical importance of having clear strategies for individual companies' well being, a comprehensive and rich literature has not yet been established on how Turkish airline companies have managed to cope with national and international competition and how to determine their competitive strategies. In this study, competitive strategies and strategy typologies of the passenger carriers in Turkey were studied, their involvement in the strategic planning process, current situation and the competition structure of passenger air transport market in Turkey were revealed. Within the framework of this study, all scheduled and charter passenger carriers in the context of Turkey were included in the sample, while the flag carrier airline was excluded since it was out of the scope of the research. The data were gathered under the qualitative research by structured and semi-structured interviews with senior executives of the companies. The secondary data used for the general introduction of airlines and some comparisons were obtained from the websites of the airlines. As a result, it has been concluded that total of 5 scheduled and 3 charter airlines mostly adopt all of Porter's Generic Strategies, yet cost leadership appeared as the primary strategy. According to Miles and Snow's Competitive Typology, passenger carriers generally exhibited Analyzers-Defenders profile. Keywords: airline, air transport, airline competition, competitive strategies, strategic planning