AVT 3050 Module 5 Written Assignment: Service Failure and Recovery at Boardwalk Air Example

The Saturday Flight That Did Not Go: Service Failure, Recovery and Putting the Customer First at Boardwalk Air

Student Name

B.S.B.A. in Aviation Management, Thomas Edison State University

AVT-3050: Airline Marketing and Customer Service

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

The Saturday Flight That Did Not Go: Service Failure, Recovery and Putting the Customer First at Boardwalk Air

A Bad Saturday

In this scenario, Boardwalk Air's Saturday morning flight from Atlantic City to Orlando is canceled when its only spare aircraft is already in use and a mechanical problem grounds the scheduled one. One hundred sixty passengers, most of them families starting a vacation, are at the gate. The next available seats are on Monday. What the airline does in the next two hours will decide whether these customers ever fly it again.

What Customers Remember

Bitner et al. (1990) collected stories from airline, hotel and restaurant customers about service encounters they remembered as especially good or bad. Many of the memorable incidents involved a service failure, and how employees responded mattered as much as the failure itself. Employees who acknowledged the problem, explained it and made an effort to fix it turned some failures into memorable positive encounters. Encounters were remembered as bad when employees ignored the problem, gave no explanation or treated customers rudely. For Boardwalk Air, the lesson is that the cancellation itself is not the end of the story; the response at the gate is.

What Makes Recovery Work

Smith et al. (1999) developed a model of satisfaction after service failure based on fairness. Customers judge recovery by the outcome they receive, such as a refund or compensation, by the procedure, such as how quickly and easily the problem is fixed, and by the interaction, such as whether staff are courteous and give an explanation. Customers want recovery that matches the size of the failure: a small apology does not fix a lost vacation day.

The Federal Floor

In 2024 the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a rule requiring airlines to provide automatic cash refunds when a flight is canceled or significantly changed and the passenger chooses not to travel. A significant delay for a domestic flight is defined as three hours or more. The rule sets a floor that every airline must meet. Putting the customer first means going beyond it: refunds are required, but rebooking, care and communication are where an airline shows it values its customers.

Recovering the Saturday Flight

Applying the research, Boardwalk Air's response would include outcome, procedure and interaction. Outcome: passengers choose between a full refund, issued automatically as the rule requires, and rebooking on the next available Boardwalk Air flight or, where agreements allow, on another airline; families who travel later receive a credit toward a future trip and meal vouchers. Procedure: staff rebook passengers at the gate and by text so families do not wait in a single line, and refunds are processed the same day. Interaction: the station manager explains the cause honestly at the gate, apologizes and stays until the last family is helped.

A Recovery Matrix for Front-Line Staff

Giving front-line staff clear authority speeds the procedure, which Smith et al. (1999) found affects satisfaction, and it removes the frustration of waiting while an employee looks for a supervisor.

Service Standards

Recovery is the backup; prevention comes first. Boardwalk Air's standards include keeping one spare aircraft available on peak Saturdays, answering phone and chat contacts within ten minutes, posting delays to customers' phones as soon as they are known and training every employee in the recovery matrix. Shaw (2011) stresses that in an airline, staff in contact with customers are part of the product, so standards must be trained, not just written.

Conclusion

Putting the customer first does not mean flights never fail. It means the airline's response to failure is fair in outcome, procedure and interaction. For Boardwalk Air, a clear recovery matrix, prepared staff and honest communication can turn a lost Saturday into a story families tell about an airline that took care of them.

References

Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71-84. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299005400105

Shaw, S. (2011). Airline marketing and management (7th ed.). Ashgate.

Smith, A. K., Bolton, R. N., & Wagner, J. (1999). A model of customer satisfaction with service encounters involving failure and recovery. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(3), 356-372. https://doi.org/10.2307/3152082