I stopped flying UA a few years ago after one too many incidents of what I felt to be horrible customer service. I did not stop flying UA out of any grandiose sense that I was going to bring down the chairman or bankrupt the company or even a sense of "I'll show them". I was well aware there were plenty of passengers ready to take my place and plenty of passengers who would be glad there would now be an extra seat open. Several comments in this thread have been of the "glad to see you go variety" - and have the "what the heck do you think you accomplish by that " tone.

I stopped flying UA simply because I was tired of giving them my money and being treated so badly after having done so. Period. Like leaving an abusive domestic partner; one knows the abuser will probably just find someone else to abuse but the abusee just feels better about not allowing themselves to be abused anymore and about no longer being complicit in the process.Please rest assured I am not implying dealing with domestic abuse is equivalent to having to deal with a rude FA - it is just the first analogy I could come up with.

So to answer the question "why stop using United - it won't bother them anyway" it is because it just might might make one feel a little better about oneself. Not a whole lot - ones self esteem should not be determined by how an airline is treating you - but a little.

As many have said none of the big three seem to make customer service an A #1 priority. My new abuser is AA but, probably by random luck, I have encountered far fewer major customer treatment issues with AA than I did with UA. I am sure there are others who have had the opposite experience.

Although one can certainly look at the individual employees of the airline in this case and say tsk tsk the problem is definitely more of a corporate culture from the top issue. I work in a field where customer service is paramount; anyone can have a bad day and occasionally one of our employees goes off the rails but just about always an observant coworker or supervisor will intervene. When that fails prompt intervention, follow up and an attempt to rectify and compensate is undertaken.

It speaks to the culture that while what was going down on the flight under discussion occurred not one employee - not a single flight attendant, flight officer, gate agent or other employee thought that maybe what was going on sufficiently inappropriate or disturbing to warrant an intervention to de escalate the situation . What to outside observers including the other passengers on the jet appeared to be a horrific incident seemed to the employees to be business as usual. And that speaks to something more than just one or two employees having a bad day. The initial response of the CEO similarly said volumes about corporate culture.

However Given the current oligopoly in the airline industry I am pessimistic regarding chances of lasting change. So this is just me venting.