It would be interesting to determine UA's ups & downs from a passenger perspective... the dark days, the good... and look at what sort of ads were run at the time.

I recall, during the pre-BK days when things were getting really bad, United was running billboards along 101 (near SF) advertising E+.

But in general, is there a strategy United has used, a different type of advertisement when things are falling apart vs doing well? And when would we define that last period of "doing well" anyway? Perhaps when they were pushing their "on time" performance napkins? Yeah, we made fun of it at the time, and likely didn't think we were looking at an airline's apex.... shows what we know!