Sustainability practices of Europe's best airlines

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the current topics of discussion that closely concerns the aviation industry. Although these discussions mostly focus on the negative effects of the aviation industry on sustainability, many activities are also carried out in the sector to reduce these negative effects. The purpose of this study is to examine what kind of activities airline companies carry out to contribute to sustainability. For this purpose, case study, one of the qualitative research designs, is used in the research. The research area consists of airlines selected as the best 10 airlines in Europe in 2021 according to Skytrax awards. In the research, “What are the sustainability activities of Europe's best 10 airlines?” The answer to the question is sought. In order to find an answer to this question, document analysis, which is one of the secondary data sources, is used as the data collection method in the research, and descriptive content analysis method is used as the data analysis method. According to the research results, it was seen that all 10 airline companies carried out activities in three dimensions of sustainability and included relevant sections on their websites. When the content of the sustainability activities carried out by the airlines was examined, no relationship was found between the ranking of Europe's Best 10 Airlines and the number and content of the sustainability activities carried out by the airlines. Lufthansa, which was chosen as the 3rd Best Airline in Europe in 2021, has carried out more activities in all three dimensions of sustainability compared to other airlines. It has been observed that Turkish Airlines, ranked 6th, and Virgin Atlantic, ranked 8th, carry out significantly more social sustainability activities compared to economic and environmental dimensions.