Crisis and Stakeholder Communication in Airline Sector: The Case Study of Turkish Airlines

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused several sectors to be affected in the aspect of economics and made way for transformation to be protected from these effects. The civil aviation sector comes first among these sectors. The aviation industry, which came to a standstill as of March 2020, was leading the sectors that showed a rapid recovery in the last quarter of 2021. The pandemic has achieved this transformation by implementing applications that can set an example for many sectors, as it requires communication and operation capability on a global and national scale. In this direction, the aim of the article is to contribute to the crisis and stakeholder communication practices in the civil aviation sector by adressing it within the scope of Istanbul International Airport (IGA) operation of the Turkish Airlines (THY). In the management of the pandemic process, Turkish Airlines' crisis communication management approach at Istanbul Airport was observed through a qualitative field study assuming all predictions, observations, and data used before the crisis by thinking how the planning of crisis was made.For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with THY's stakeholders at Istanbul Airport in August and September 2021 and were discussed by narrative analysis method. The most important finding of the study is that the first key to overcome a global crisis that affects everyone with the least damage is to be capable of cooperating with stakeholders and managing this communication for the common benefit.