Research on the planned failure and recovery in airline overbooking

The planned failure and recovery is largely overlooked in the traditional service recovery literature. The purpose of this study is to establish a process-by-outcome framework suitable to gain the understanding of the impacts of critical factors on customers' satisfaction in the planned failure. These are achieved by proposing a theoretical classification framework using the content analysis method based on the data collected in the Chinese aviation industry. As contributions, this study firstly defines the planned failure and distinguished the concept from the traditional service recovery. Secondly, this study presents a classification system of the critical incidents accounting for the recovery process, outcome and customer consequential behaviors. The proposed framework helps link the critical incidents of company to customer's satisfaction and the consequential behaviors of customer.