Introduction
Aviation industry is one of the oldest and rapidly increasing sectors in the world over the past many years. At first, it had only been growing in terms of staff and the number of aircrafts but now every airline is competing with others in terms of their survival and almost everything to be the best in world.
But just one wrong service delivery or just one incident can bring down the airlines and may even affect its survival. When there is a service failure, the efforts an organization takes for service recovery can have a profound effect on customers’ satisfaction with an organisation as well as on the quality of the relationship with the organization, despite other efforts by the organization to build long-term relationships with its customers.
Airlines in particular are faced with several challenges affecting their survival, and one such challenge is the fact that they are particularly vulnerable to service failures. Several airlines have done researches which indicate that customer satisfaction with an airline’s service recovery efforts significantly influences their relationship with the airline as well as their future patronage of the airline.
Therefore, in this industry it's not only the delivery of the service that counts--it's the recovery when things go wrong and that’s what my topic is about—Airline Service Recovery in case of downgrade and denied boarding.
Denied Boarding
What is denied boarding?
According to the aviation industry, the term ‘denied boarding’ or bumping is defined as when a passenger is not allowed to board as a result of airline overbooking even though:
• he holds a confirmed reservation for the flight;
• he has met the applicable check-in deadline;
• he is not travelling free of any charge or at a reduced fare not available directly or indirectly to the public; and
• He is not precluded from boarding by reason of application of conditions of carriage or for other...