MEASURING THE EFFICIENCY OF TRADITIONAL AIRLINE COMPANIES WITH DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS BEFORE AND AFTER THE PANDEMIC

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected traditional airlines, the largest passenger segment of which is international traffic. The closure of borders due to the pandemic has significantly reduced passenger numbers of traditional airlines. The aim of this study is to reveal the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic performances of the nine largest traditional airlines in Europe by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). For this purpose, the efficiency of airline companies was compared before and after the pandemic by using aviation data between the years 2019-2020. In this context, "Available seat kilometer", "number of employees" and "number of aircraft" were used as input variables,; "passenger number" was used as output variable. According to the results of the analysis, Aegean Airlines was fully efficient both before and after the pandemic.