United is still filling a lot of seats, so not everyone has fled. My guess is that millions of customers (perhaps tens of millions) have been satisfied with their United experience. They willingly purchased tickets and have all safely reached their destinations.

But as with every big company, some are dissatisfied with their United experience, and some number of them have reduced their purchases from United. Nobody on the outside knows the exact number of them, but AA's aggressive courting of the 1Ks over the past two plus years has helped AA increase its revenues by a much larger percentage than has UA since March, 2012. That's an undeniable fact. Delta and US also attracted higher yields, unit revenues and overall revenues in that two years as well.

UA was the only airline of the big four (AA, DL, UA and WN) to lose money during the first quarter, and it wasn't close to break-even - UA suffered a huge net loss even when we ignore the special items.

The wings haven't come off yet, but UA is wounded, and it's clear that some of that financial damage resulted from the actions and attitudes of its executive team. Each subsequent announcement from those maroons appears to be a step in the wrong direction, as if they can magically make bigger profits (or smaller net losses) if they only make the frequent flyer program even less appealing. As if UA's multi-hundred million dollar net loss resulted from an overly-generous mileage loyalty program.

As I've said before, hope the other airline CEOs sent Smisek a nice gift basket, as he's singlehandedly boosted their revenues by a large measure (while UA's revenue growth lags the industry).