The strategic responses of the turkish airline companies to the deregulation of domestic air transportation in 2003

Today, it can be seen that the countries seem to follow more liberal policies in terms of domestic air transport. Especially in the United States of America (USA) and the European Union (EU), the air transport liberalization has reached to a more advanced structure, and these actions are spread to other countries. These developments lead to a new structure build up in the airline markets in which the competition exists. Therefore it can be said that airline companies are operating in a much more dynamic and changing environment. Such an environment forces the airline companies to deliberate more strategically to be able to survive and succeed. With this awareness, in response to deregulation airline companies developing new strategies are observed in the "free market" and a large number of academic studies have been conducted on the mentioned strategic behaviors of the companies.With the deregulation of the domestic air transport in 2003, Turkey followed these developments. With the deregulation of domestic air transportation which led to a competition, it created the possibility of new airline companies to enter the market where only one airline company was operating. In this study, the strategic responses of the existing and new airline companies in the Turkish domestic line against the occurred developments are analyzed. In this context, the first part of the study, the terms of strategy and competition were discussed and the transition of US and EU in to the free market and the competitive environment and strategies that are developed by the airline companies are explained. Then, the development of the Turkish air transport regulations is illustrated and in the last part, in the light of the collected qualitative data, it has been attempted to analyze the competitive structure of the market after the deregulation and to determine the strategic responses of the airline companies.