The analysis of airline selection criteria at Turkish air cargo transportation industry with analytic hierarchy process

The aim of the air cargo agencies serving at air cargo transportation is to choose the airline ensuring the delivery in a fastest way and with the lowest cost, at the right time and to the right place. In short, air cargo agencies search the answer to this question: "Which airline should I choose in cargo shipping process?". In this context, determining the criteria that affect selecting airline and calculating significance levels of these criteria is crucial. In addition, in terms of sustainability and increasing competitiveness, airlines' serving at air cargo transportation determining strategies with regards to significance levels of selecting criteria is critical. The purpose of this research is to determine the criteria that affect the selection of airline at air cargo transportation, to calculate the significance levels of these criteria and to carry out comparison of the determined four airlines considering the calculated significance levels with Analytic Hierarchy Process method, one of the multi-criteria decision making methods. Besides this, at the end of the analysis, the most competitive airline of Turkish air cargo transportation will be determined. The reason of using the AHP method is hierarchy's being multi-criteria and approving professionals making pairwise comparisons at calculating significance levels of criteria. Data was gathered with survey technique. Survey was implemented to the senior executives at air cargo agencies. Keywords: Air Cargo Transportation, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Airline Selecting Criteria, Competitiveness, Air Cargo Agencies