Hello, this is Jane Allen with an Update for Friday, December 19, 2003.

This week, we took several important steps toward getting our financial house in order.

On Tuesday, we announced that we had reached a formal agreement to secure 2 billion dollars in exit financing with JPMorgan and Citigroup. Each bank will underwrite 200 million dollars of the non-guaranteed portion of the facility and 800 million dollars of the guaranteed portion, which requires the backing of a loan guarantee from the Air Transportation Stabilization Board or ATSB. The financing is also subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

The willingness of the banks to commit to a substantial amount of at-risk financing, totaling $400 million, independent of an ATSB loan guarantee, reflects the progress United has made in the past year. It also reflects the banks' confidence in our plan for 2004 and beyond. United is on track to reduce its costs by 5 billion dollars annually by 2005, and we have improved our revenue performance and our operational results.

On Thursday, we filed an update to our previous proposal to the ATSB for a federal loan guarantee. The updated proposal addresses concerns raised by the ATSB last year and reflects a company that is substantially stronger today. When United's business plan was submitted to the ATSB for review in 2002, the Air Transportation Stabilization Board said that United had to address four issues - we had to reduce our cost structure, develop a comprehensive response to the low-cost carriers, ensure that our financial projections were based on conservative assumptions, and manage the company's pension obligations.

The company's filing with the ATSB details the steps that we have taken to address those issues and describes our progress in significantly reducing costs and generating revenue while maintaining operating performance.

Financial and operating performance are key elements of United's new Success Sharing program, which gets us all working together toward the same objectives. Success Sharing rewards us if we perform well against three goals: customer satisfaction, reliability, and financial performance.

This is an important program, and we are going to provide a lot of information about it to employees starting in the New Year. During early January, a detailed newsletter about Success Sharing will be mailed to the home of every U.S. employee, and to international employees via bulk mailing to airline locations.

There will be articles about Success Sharing in NewsReal and on SkyNet. To support this rollout and to ensure that managers are fully prepared to answer employees' questions, managers at the hubs and line stations will briefed in detail on the program by subject matter experts from WHQ. In this way, managers will be knowledgeable enough to answer questions from their employees.

The communications roll out about Success Sharing is already under way. There has been a NewsReal article about it based on Glenn Tilton's Dec. 16th "Eye on UA" message. Managers have already received talking points, message themes, and a PowerPoint presentation. The week of December 22nd, there will be another NewsReal article - this one about goals, eligibility, including international employees, and the plan components. In addition, Frequently Asked Questions will be distributed to managers. So keep an eye out for information about Success Sharing. It's an exciting and valuable program that ties your efforts directly to United's success.

One final piece of business news - United has confirmed that we have received notification from the U.S. Department of Justice of an investigation into Mesa's offer for Atlantic Coast Airlines. The company will cooperate fully with the Department of Justice's request for information, but we must reiterate the fact that United was not a participant in Mesa's offer to acquire ACA.

Finally, December is a particularly challenging month for the airline industry. Increased load factors and winter weather can cause delays and cancellations. This year is no exception. Because of the high load factors, we've added flights throughout the system. This helps us maintain or competitive edge and gives our customers what they ask for, choice and flexibility. In fact, to meet the needs of our aircraft schedule, we recalled over 300 flight attendants from voluntary furlough.

We've also been affected by the flu that is prevalent throughout North America, which has resulted in a high volume of sick calls. All of this has placed a strain on our flight attendant resources through the end of the year.

While we expect coverage to be tight during this peak travel time, scheduling took steps early in the month to ensure good coverage toward the end.
Depending on where you are based, you may experience select understaffing on certain flights. This enables us to maintain operational integrity on days when reserve coverage is limited. In the event of irregular operations, reassignments may occur to minimize costly delays and ensure flights are appropriately staffed to provide the best service to our customers.

Discretionary ANP may not be offered for the remainder of the month and an increase in trade allotments for the last 12 days may not be feasible due to the need for flight attendant coverage. We believe the steps we've taken will get us through the historically difficult pre-Christmas travel period and if nothing unusual occurs, operations could be normal during the last week of December. And that is very good news.

That's all for today. Thanks for listening and have a safe and enjoyable weekend.