Selecting strategic partner for Iranian official airline based on mixed fuzzy AHP and COPRAS methods

Abstract

Aviation Industry is one of the most competitive industry which drive many airlines to grab more market share through providing more and better services to distant areas. One of the most common practices to expand covered territory is having partnership with International Airlines. One of the most challenging responsibility of Airline management system is selecting an appropriate partner from numerous airlines based on such criteria as: passenger satisfaction, internal business process, organizational learning and financial measures. Due to various criteria for assessment of each alternative, the decision-making process is so complicated and complex, therefore in this research a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method is exploited to mitigate the complexity of problem based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and COPRAS one for weighting criteria and alternative ranking, respectively. Additionally, owing to existence of inherent ambiguity in expert’s judgments, the Fuzzy sets theory has been applied to model the vagueness of the problem. The proposed method has been conducted for the Iran’s Official Airline (Homa) to select an appropriate partner.