<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I never expect an airline to get it completely together during irregular operations.
[/B]</font>
Ability has a lot to do with corporate culture. By the sounds of it, UA did a terrible job at managing the situation post landing. One would think they have a proceedure for customer care already scripted ... but apparently not.
For a good example of going the extra mile see
http://www.alaskasworld.com/NEWS/2003/01/17_DLinYAK.asp