toward becoming a well-known brand all around the world by being a member of Star Alliance. After private companies entered the market, TK was forced to com-
pete in prices, and as a result, it launched a low-rate airline service, with the AnadoluJet sub-brand based in Ankara on 23 April 2008. The airplane crash that
occurred during landing in Amsterdam Airport on 25 February 2009 caused the revision of all fl ight-related processes. With the agreement made between TK and
Havaş, a subsidiary company of TAV, on 1 January 2010, Turkish Ground Services TGS was established in order to give ground operation service in airports. Upon
inspection of AU service quality by the international audit fi rm, Skytrax , AU was promoted to four-star airline category at the end of 2007 Gökırmak
2014 .
5.4 SWOT Analysis
SWOT is defi ned as a situation analysis for any foundations’, destinations’, or prod- ucts’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis. It helps to focus on
strengths to minimize weakness and to take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available Pahl and Richter
2009 . Opportunities are elements of
external environment which provide advantages to foundations about a specifi c target or group of targets, while threats on the contrary are any environmental devel-
opments which provide problems for foundations. Strengths, on the other hand, represent the distinguished and specifi c characteristics of foundations; conversely,
weaknesses are the preventing and limiting characteristics of foundations.
TK’s competitive position in the international aviation industry and brand management is researched in this study. Skytrax criteria of the year 2013, which star
airline companies from one star to fi ve stars, were used for SWOT analysis . To compare TK’s strengths and weaknesses, SQ was chosen since the airline is getting
fi ve stars from Skytrax almost every year and it is undoubtedly the most consistent Skytrax’s fi ve-starred airline. “Web site and general rating,” “business class prod-
ucts and service ratings,” and “economy class products and service ratings” of both TK and SQ airlines are demonstrated in Tables
5.2 ,
5.3 , and
5.4 . TK is not in the
lead of any criteria which could be the most impressive result of all three tables. On the other hand, apart from the equal ones, SQ is half star in the lead in some criteria,
one star in some criteria, and one and a half star in the lead of some other criteria. These differences are shown on the tables as “” minimum for half star, “”
medium for one star, and “” maximum for one and a half star.
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats were summarized in Table 5.4
. The criteria mentioned in Tables
5.2 ,
5.3 , and
5.4 were simply moved to Table
5.5 as strengths and weaknesses under three topic titles: Web site and general rating,
business class product and service rating, and economy class product and service rating.
Opportunities and threats on the other hand were summarized, taking the differences on strengths and weaknesses into consideration.
As can be seen in Table 5.5
, receiving fi ve stars from Skytrax is not far away from TK when especially “threats” are considered. Although “cleanliness” seems to
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be the most important difference from the table, and therefore the fi rst threat, “delays and cancelations” threat is undoubtedly a prior problem and topic to
handle since the other threats could be solved easier.
5.5 Conclusion
