Impact of delays on customers' safety perceptions and behavioral intentions

Purpose: The main objective of this paper is to examine how the customers' perceptions of delays and safety relate to each other and to behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach: We modified a customer satisfaction questionnaire to include questions relating to the constructs we wanted to examine and collaborated with a major international airline to collect data from 797 customers through in-flight surveys. Findings: We obtain three key original findings. First, perceived safety exerts a direct positive effect on behavioral intentions. Second, perceived delays exert an indirect effect mediated by perceived safety. Finally, customers believe operational practices affect both delay and safety. Originality/value: This is the first paper that examines the customer's perspective on two of the most important aspects of airline operations management: delays and safety. Our findings are of great value to managers who want to evaluate the impact of delays and safety on customers and to researches interested in the theoretical relationships between these two constructs.