The purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting service recovery expectations and service recovery satisfaction in the airline service industry. Also, this research is intended to investigate how the relationship varies according to individual"s complaint behavior tendency. This study has several differentiation points. Firstly, the study focuses on the customer-side variables, which are customer loyalty and perceived service quality, among the leading variables influencing service recovery expectations based on the previous studies. Specifically, the degree of customer loyalty was assessed by the presence of a specific airline membership, and the degree of perceived service quality was judged by other service benefits according to the in-flight classes(business class versus economy class). The result of the pretest confirmed that the manipulations were statistically significant. Secondly, the study concentrates on airline consumers of Generation Z in order to find out their airline consumption behavior and perception. Generation Z refers to the next generation of the Millennium generation, and generally consists of people who are born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. As reflected in words such as YOLO or Work-Life Balance, which represents lifestyles of Generation Z, many people now travel and enjoy their leisure time to find happiness right away. In this context, the study is needed to look specifically at the airline consumption behaviors of Generation Z, and seek how airlines can respond effectively by identifying the needs of their growing consumers. In this study, the scenario-based experiment was conducted on the Generation Z by manipulating the customer-side variables. Hypotheses were verified by the two-way ANOVA using a total of 445 responses. In detail, two - way ANOVA was conducted by the 4×2 factorial design measuring customer-side variables (divided by four different types according to customer loyalty and perceived service quality) and complaint behaviors tendency (divided by active complainers versus passive complainers). The results showed that customer loyalty and perceived service quality did not show a statistically significant difference in service recovery expectation and service recovery satisfaction. On the other hand, the interaction effects were shown with complaint behavior tendency: Active Complainers showed higher degree of service recovery expectation and service recovery satisfaction than passive complainers even though they both had identical service failure and service recovery processes. The implications of this study are as follows: First, customers who show complaints after service failure occurs can act as an opportunity for airlines. Second, airline service operators should seek ways to motivate customers to actively engage in complaining behaviors. Among them, it would be desirable for airlines to appropriately utilize service guarantees that provide benefits to customers who show complaint behaviors. By doing so, airline service operators are able to find out opinions of dissatisfied customers and increase their satisfaction by meeting their expectations.