Prioritizing crisis management approaches in the airline industry. Evidence from Greece

Abstract

The global airline industry has faced a considerable downturn, because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Numerous measures had to be taken from governments and the airline industry itself in order to survive the pandemic crisis. The Greek airline industry is the main case of this study. The main goal of this study is to prioritize the appropriateness of crisis management approaches in the domestic airline market. To achieve that, Fuzzy MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) is employed (consequently a set of criteria and their weighting). The criteria are extracted using the thematic analysis and synthesis method gathering data from the international literature and news. The MCDM analysis is implemented in a fuzzy setting due to the inherent uncertainty in the airline market. The results of this study demonstrate that the actions better characterizing the crisis operations of the domestic airline companies fall under the knowledge-based management approach.