Perhaps I may be allowed to expand on my simple 'death of a thousand cuts' as, having thought further, I have a guess as to how this cut happened.
In the mid 1980s, a US fashion in business was to split an organisation to give 'more autonomy' to each main department and sometimes, to sections within them. This idea was enthusiastically taken up by many corp orates.
The idea was that, by giving each department/section head control of their budget and resources - they would do better than being dictated to from above. However, having watched this process from the inside of an American company, I quickly saw the way the new system could be turned on the dept manager.
The mgr was given responsibility and some authority but only enough to ensure that - if they made a klanx up - they could take all the blame and senior mgmt walked away.
So my GUESS is that the department that is responsible for the UM service found it was no longer cost effective (for whatever reason) and got permission to close it down.
It is possible that top mgmt had no idea about this being done and that no one said, "Hang on a minute - in the small scheme of things this is pricey but in the greater scheme it is a unique offering that sets us apart and with the overall company profits, we can continue to partly subsidize this. Not least on the basis that, if we show ourselves to be a good supplier to young people, they will think favorably of us when they are actually buying the tickets."
So, it may be more ¢o¢k up than planning.