Airlines and risk management with financial ratios: Turkısh Airlines case study

Abstract

Air transport which is the fastest mode of transport can be accepted as the gift of the 20th century to the world. As our global economy grows ever more linked, air transportation is the factor that brings people together. The growing air transportation in all over the world and espacially in Turkey has increased the importance of airline passenger and cargo operations and has brought intense competition in recent years. Under heavy competition, it is of utmost importance to have sustainable success of an ever-evolving and growing market by accurately assessing the financial performance and risks of businesses. Even though there are financial ratios which are generally used for services, manufacturing and raw materials sectors widely, there are a lot of metrics and indicators specific to the airline industry used to assess the financial status of airlines. Traditional ratio analysis is a frequently used for financial analysis and difeerent ratios are used to match the type of analysis that needs to be done. However, it can be benefical to group several indicators together into a statistical model. In this paper, after literature review, one of the most important financial risk evaluation models developed for airlines called Airscore model and also one of the most popular and practical model that is Altman’s bankruptcy prediction model (Z’’-score) are examined and its application with Turkish Airlines’ financial data is evaluated.