STAKEHOLDER PERCEPTION TOWARDS AIRLINE COMPANY IN REHABILITATION PLAN, THE CASE STUDY OF THAI AIR CARRIER

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic has severed damaged the tourism industry across the world, especially in countries that rely on tourism to prosper such as Thailand. However, many air carriers have ceased to exist due to the lack of cash flow, strictly over-fly policy, and tourism entrance restrictions, many Air carriers combined with creditor has sought asylum using a rehabilitation plan to continue their operation, the question remain is how it affects the stakeholder perception in the time of the company's financial crisis. This study aims to investigate the rehabilitation plan affects stakeholder perception’s trust, and how rehabilitation affects the brand image. A qualitative survey has been applied to this paper to collect the data from the interviewee and to answer the question based on 3 frameworks namely, commitment-trust theory, brand reputation theory, and stakeholder theory. To get in-depth information, this research has gathered 30 focus group interviewees who have extensive experiences in the aviation field, such as airline captains, airline pilots, authority officers, and customers, from low-cost airline customers to full-service airline customers alike. Ultimately, the author has discovered that rehabilitation increase uncertainty affecting internal and external stakeholders' perceptions which leads to lowering their trust not only that, rehabilitation will also decrease the brand image. Lastly, the collected data suggests that “a clear, precise and transparency management could improve the situation”. Based on these findings, air carriers could use this thematic paper as a guideline for establishing a recovery process.