Strategic Decisions and Policies on Türkiye-Europe Air Cargo Transport

This study examines the air cargo traffic in terms of transported cargo weights between Europe and Türkiye in the 10-year period between 2012 and 2021. Annual data was obtained from EUROSTAT and then this data was processed by using R language and Minitab. Freight tonne kilometers (FTKs) growth analyses for the World, Europe and Türkiye were done by fitting exponential curves to the data. Forecast for cargo traffic between Türkiye and Europe were done using exponential smoothing with trend adjustment method. The results reveal the strategic decisions for determining airport pairs in air cargo transport between Europe and Türkiye. It has been determined that there is air cargo transportation between 11 airports from Türkiye and 90 airports from 31 European countries. The most striking result of this study is that while Istanbul IGA airport serves as the main hub for air cargo transportation with other airports in Europe, Sabiha Gökçen airport has been on the way to become a secondary hub in recent years with the strategic agreements between airports. The transported air cargo weight between remaining 8 airports (since Atatürk airport closed to air cargo in 2022) in Türkiye and European airports is negligible. Determinants of choosing these airports might possibly be geographic locations, political relations with these countries, specific products of these locations, closeness to the industrial regions.