... a long time, major customer left pissed off. Nope, not seeing how it can be considered a success. With a reasonable flight attendant there's no reason to consider that there might have been a risk of anything but a calm flight in the first place, so having him leave calmly is not success.
I've never had anything but good experiences with United through a couple of hundred thousand miles of flights (London <=> SFO regularly for a few years - still got about 100k unused miles...).
But if this had happened to me, I wouldn't be flying United the next time.
My choice of United instead of British Airways or Virgin for that period was entirely down to Uniteds much better (for me) frequent flier program (LHR <=> SFO gave me upgrades to business around one leg out 3 or 4 or so on average, while BA and Virgin were impossibly stingy, though the quality of their business class was better), but that would not outweigh a risk of not getting on the plane.
United is not exactly in an economic situation where they can afford pissing off their best customers.
... a long time, major customer left pissed off. Nope, not seeing how it can be considered a success.
Not only that, but a customer who writes a travel blog which appears to be fairly widely read (judging just by the number of comments on the original blog post) and who clearly knows how to use social media to get his story out.
This whole thing is a huge black-eye for United from what I can see.
Not even the bit I wrote in the previous sentence? To clarify: "the author went off the plane calmly and without making a scene".