The purpose of this research is to identify the impact of airline passengers' perception of service recovery output/process on their satisfaction and loyalty. We want to identify the direct and indirect effects of service recovery on airline passenger loyalty by distinguishing the output and the process of the service recovery. A questionnaire was distributed to airline passengers who had a problem during their last airline flight. As we had several latent variables, we used partial least squares (PLS), a variance-based structural equation modeling method. As findings, we observed that in general, clients were not satisfied with the way that the service has been recovered. The most frequent reason for complaining was a problem due to flight delay, followed by a problem with the baggage, overbooking, and flight cancellation. Nevertheless, the findings reveal the positive impact of service recovery's output/process qualities on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The output quality of service recovery is the most relevant.

The current study contributes to the extant literature by illustrating that airlines can enhance passenger (customer) satisfaction and loyalty by focusing on the enhancement of those aspects of the pre-flight and in-flight service experience over which they have direct control. The results indicate that airline passenger perceived pre-flight service quality and perceived in-flight service quality are distinct aspects of airline service quality that have independent and positive direct effects on airline passenger satisfaction. Moreover, perceived pre-flight service quality had a substantive, positive impact on airline passenger loyalty. Our findings illustrate the importance of airline pre-flight service quality and highlight the focal role that customer perceptions of pre-experience service quality (e.g., pre-experience communication, procedures, and interactions) play in the enhancement of customer satisfaction and fostering customer loyalty.