FLIGHT PUNCTUALITY AND AIRLINE REPURCHASE INTENTION: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF PASSENGER SATISFACTION AND THE MODERATING ROLE OF AIRLINE REPUTATION

Abstract

On-time performance has become the most visible and commercially consequential dimension of airline competition, yet whether it converts into repeat purchase — rather than merely episodic satisfaction — remains underexplored, particularly in South Asian markets where national and international carriers compete for a young, price-sensitive flying public. This study investigates whether flight punctuality (FP) directly predicts repurchase intention (RI), whether that effect travels through passenger satisfaction (PS) as a mediator, and whether airline reputation (AR) strengthens or weakens the satisfaction–repurchase relationship. A cross-sectional survey collected data from 290 frequent air travelers  in Pakistan, meeting the 10-respondents-per-item guideline (Hair et al., 2019), using PLS-SEM. Flight punctuality significantly increased both repurchase intention (β = 0.293, p < 0.001) and passenger satisfaction (β = 0.738, p < 0.001); satisfaction significantly increased repurchase intention (β = 0.598, p < 0.001) and acted as a complementary partial mediator, carrying approximately 60% of punctuality's total effect on repurchase (indirect β = 0.441; total β = 0.734). Airline reputation negatively moderated the satisfaction–repurchase path (β = −0.069, p = 0.004), producing a compensatory buffering pattern whereby satisfaction predicted repurchase most strongly for low-reputation carriers (conditional effect = 0.666) and least strongly for high-reputation carriers (0.529) — a finding that reflects cultural homogeneity in the sample, the relational trust norms of the Pakistani aviation market, and the bounded scope of a single-country cross-sectional design, all of which constrain the full amplification effect that reputation produces in more diverse, multi-market datasets. The model explained 54.4% of the variance in satisfaction and 76.9% of the variance in repurchase intention, with good fit (SRMR = 0.056). Airlines operating in similar emerging markets should treat schedule reliability as a primary revenue-retention strategy rather than a backend operational metric, while recognising that the value of reputation depends on whether it is built on accumulated performance or inherited brand legacy. All four hypotheses were supported, contributing a moderated-mediation framework grounded in expectation–disconfirmation and signalling theories to the aviation services literature.