Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
CASE STUDIES ON TRANSPORT POLICY, cilt.10, sa.1, ss.287-299, 2022 (ESCI)
The subsidized routes scheme in the Turkish air transport sector began in 2013, being relatively late in com-parison with other nations. However, the air carriers in Turkey have not paid much attention to this and the subsidized routes scheme is underutilized. The aim of this study is to identify the underlying problems behind this underutilization and offer potential solutions that can be implemented by interviewing participants from the DGCA, (Turkey's aviation authority), and airlines in Turkey. The data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 participants, 7 from airlines and 3 from the DGCA, serving various positions related to route management and those who are responsible for the subsidy scheme. The reasons for the un-derutilization of the Turkish subsidized routes scheme and suggested improvements to this were extracted from the transcripts through an inductive thematic analysis method. The reasons of the underutilization of the scheme were categorized into four main themes: problems with the content of the legislation, problems arising from the dynamics of the sector/economy/politics, stakeholder interests/interactions, and airport related reasons. Addi-tionally, suggestions for the subsidy scheme were identified and grouped into four main areas: suggestions with the theory and practice of the subsidized routes mechanism, more inclusive policy recommendations, suggestions directly affecting airlines, and suggestions related to stakeholders. Gaining a better understanding of the current problems of this subsidy scheme and proposing possible solutions for the root causes will allow initiatives to design more widely used subsidy schemes in the future.