The relationships between load factor, airline's operational performance, and financial performance present inconsistent findings in extant literature. As such, Chapter One aims to reconcile the mixed findings by delineating these relationships at more nuanced levels thought statistical within and between specification, which has not been adopted in previous literature. The findings strongly support the crucial importance of within and between specification, indicating that between carriers, load factor demonstrates an inverted U-shaped relationship with financial performance. Within carriers, the higher the average load factor, the more negative impact on financial performance with the increase of load factor. Building on the mixed findings from previous literature as well as leveraging on cognitive appraisal theory, Chapter Two investigates how the implementation of the new baggage fee policy impacts carrier's financial performance, on-time arrivals, and consumer complaints. Utilizing discontinuous growth modelling, our analysis shows that the effect of this policy is twofold. Financial performance dropped immediately upon the policy implementation but improved for about 3.5 years before facing a diminishing return. On-time arrivals improved immediately upon the policy implementation and kept improving for another 4 years before the effect diminishes. Although there was no immediate impact on consumer complaint, the trend of consumer complaint, in the long run, demonstrates an inverted-U shaped curve with time passing since the policy implementation.Drawing on organizational learning framework and building on discontinuous growth curve modelling, Chapter Three investigates the impact of mergers on operational performance and financial performance at two distinctive stages: the immediate transition stage and the long-term recovery stage. Operational performance was found to deteriorate immediately while financial performance was found to increase immediately upon mergers. No long-term impact was found with regard to both operational performance and financial performance. However, carriers' pre-merger performance moderates the performance during the transition stage in that low-performing carriers, rather than high-performing carriers, benefit more in both operational performance and financial performance.
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