"revenue" vs "award" bucket when UA causes missed flight

"Award" seats are, of course, subject to availability, whereas "revenue" seats are there to be sold at any time to any willing buyer. But what if months before someone paid hundreds of dollars more for W tickets in order to use SWUs to fly in biz, the award seats were confirmed at the time of purchase and the SWUs pulled from the MPer's account, and then when the day came to travel, only hours before the scheduled UA flight to EWR, a UA delay made the connection impossible. Ought UA accommodate the 1K passenger and his spouse by putting them into "revenue" biz seats on another flight without "award" inventory, since but for UA's performance failure (dead last among 15 US carriers in on-time arrivals) they would have gotten what they expected and paid for with the more expensive W ticket and use of SWUs? Well, UA wouldn't, insisting that though there were unsold "revenue" seats on other flights that day and the next, they would not let them be used for "upgrade" purposes.

Yes, that may be consistent with UA's "rules" relating to the use of SWUs and the airline may not be contractually obligated to do anything more than rebook us in economy and give us back the SWUs which will probably go unused now (we should book more travel with them to use the SWUs before they burn at the end of January?!), but the right decision for them to make? I expect that they will have empty "revenue" seats when they close the doors on one or more of those alternative flight options, and I know they will see no "loyalty" from this customer in the future.