As it's been pointed out by all sides, there are multiple points of failure with the agent's interaction with the customer.

As customers, we like to hear a sense of sympathy, and in fact, a sense of solidarity when the person on the other side of the counter or phone shares their frustration at the company.

However, this is a slippery and dangerous slope. Bad mouthing your service provider or the company you are paying money to is far different than bad mouthing the company that is signing your paycheck.

While fundamentally both the employee and customer feel the same, it is a bad idea for the employee to say negative points about their employer. An employee will typically be the scapegoat of a company's issues; that's part of what their salary/pay entails.

As long as the issues the company have are not illegal, it's best to just apologize and say that this is an issue that will be mentioned to the supervisor or management, and leave it at that. Any additional negative comments by the employee comes across as trying to gain the sympathy of the customer at the expense of the employer, and ultimately will give customers a sense that doing business with the company should be avoided, which does the employee and employer no good.

Yes, I know many of us are, in a way, hoping for UA to fall flat on its face... but I'd rather see improvements to UA instead of the airline going bankrupt, again.