DOI: 10.26650/jtl.2026.1820008 ISSN: 2459-1718

Anatomy of a Desperate Wait: Passengers’ Emotions and Behavioral Reactions to the Service Recovery Deficiency for Delayed Flights by Airlines

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Flight delays are major operational challenge for airlines, generating substantial financial costs and undermining passenger satisfaction. Effective service recovery is critical to mitigating negative emotional and behavioral responses. Although prior research has extensively examined service recovery, it has largely focused on general negative affect, offering limited insight into how discrete emotions shape post-failure responses when recovery is inadequate. Addressing this gap, this study examines how insufficient service recovery following flight delays elicits anger, anxiety, and frustration, and how these emotions differentially influence complaints, negative word-of-mouth, and switching intentions. Grounded in the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the study uses a relational survey design and primary data from 418 airline passengers aged 18 and above residing in Türkiye who had experienced a flight delay. Structural equation modeling tested the proposed model. Findings show that inadequate service recovery significantly increases all three negative emotions. However, their behavioral consequences differ: anger has no significant effect, frustration predicts negative word-of-mouth, and anxiety significantly predicts complaints, negative word-of-mouth, and switching intentions. These findings demonstrate that discrete emotions produce distinct behavioral outcomes. The study extends the S-O-R framework by incorporating emotion-specific mechanisms and highlights anxiety reduction as a key priority for effective service recovery and customer retention.

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