Hi, this is Glenn, and I'm calling this week from San Francisco where we had meetings on Friday with our employees out at the Aviation Museum at the airport, following meetings that we had with the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chamber of Commerce and the mayor here in San Francisco. And, of course, we had similar meetings in Los Angeles earlier in the week -- all of which went well.

I was pleased with the meetings that we had with media. I was pleased with the meeting that we had with local government and the chamber of commerce in both cities, but most particularly really very satisfied and pleased with the meetings that we had with employees.

We had open-ended meetings which lasted as long as we could, took as many questions as we possibly could. They were open, they were candid, they were honest, forthright and very engaging. Most importantly, the conversation or the discussion was very much two way, and Pete McDonald, Doug Hacker and I and Rosemary Moore received a variety of ideas and suggestions as to how we might most effectively execute the plan for transformation for United.

As a matter of fact, in San Francisco, I was the last person to leave the meeting with Jack Knox and we were standing there still talking to pilot colleagues and a few members of the mechanics' group when they were busy putting away the chairs and loading them on a truck and by the time we left the aviation museum there in San Francisco there were no chairs left and they had loaded them on the truck and departed and we were the very last to go.

So to sum up, the meetings went not only well, they really were excellent. The level of engagement and type of questions and conversation with all the groups confirmed to me that we have the talent, the ideas and the commitment to get on the same good page that we need to get on to take this company forward and turn this company around and make it competitive in the future.

It's also clear that we have to immediately work out how to tap into these employee ideas and experiences as we continue to develop and put the detail into United's plan for transformation. I acknowledged in both Los Angeles and in San Francisco that it's a very important thing -- and I recognize it is -- to find a way to get the ideas from the front line more effectively up the line and in to management so that we can make them a part of our way forward. I said in both meetings, I acknowledged that I don't think we do that as well today as we need to. You'll be hearing much more from me about that as we go forward, because we're going to try to put a process in place to make that easier and to make it more effective.

As we continue to talk to all of you and to others about the plan, such as the chambers of commerce that we visited, the mayors' offices that we visited in both cities and the editorial boards of the two newspapers in both cities, we will continue to talk about the fact that the level of interest and opinion is going to continue to be intense, and we're going to be developing our way forward -- our plan for transformation of the company -- in a fishbowl. And we should all expect to continue to read opinions and ideas -- many of which are formed by others who have self-interest and not really much detailed understanding of what it is we hope to accomplish, but we have to face up to the fact that we are indeed very interesting to many.

I want to assure you that, just as we've been discussing in our employee meetings, we have a very solid plan that can transform this company, provided we can all get the same good page. The plan is based on quality work and continues to be improved as we involved more and more people in the discussion and development of the details of the plan.

I think what would be helpful for all of us to understand is that as hard as it will be to make the changes required to take this company out of Chapter 11, when we do we're going to emerge ahead of significant competitors. I think everybody needs to remember -- and certainly it was evident this week -- that our competitors are now talking about the very same, identical issues that we've been working on for the past nine months.

That's so, because these are industry issues, not unique to our company. The only difference for us is that we know that it's not only going to fix this company for the short term, but it's going to give us the opportunity to create durable, resilient and sustainable change over time that allow us to be prosperous for the long term. We have a significant advantage over our competitors with respect to that timetable that serves us now, and we should use it to our benefit.

We all know that the biggest issue for this industry today is its cost structure. And certainly every one of our competitors out there now is talking about their cost structure and how best to engage the various groups that must be engaged to create a cost structure in the industry that allows us to compete with a fare structure that is getting increasingly transparent and very competitive.

When our mainline costs and our overhead are brought in line with the costs of our best mainline competitors, there are other factors that are then going to determine our success. What will it take to lead the market after the costs are equalized in the business?

I'm convinced that that answer is providing the customer with the products and services that will give them the value, the convenience and the onboard experience that they now expect on a sustainable basis, regardless of which United product they choose. And I think that we here at United have the best foundation on which to build that value for future travelers.

Simply put, we have the best global route structure network in the business. We have the best partners in the Star Alliance. We know how to feed that mainline network from United Express. What we've missed over time was the significant growth of the low-cost carrier that has been inarguably taking market share from us and from every single one of our competitors. This has also impacted our network, and we've lost passengers who used to connect into our hubs and the mainline.

Our employees, our union leaders and our management understand that we need to compete in this segment of the commercial aviation business in the United States. And we're making progress and getting alignment and consensus as to what it's going to take to compete in this segment effectively.

We all know that we tried Shuttle. We all have a good understanding of why Shuttle didn't work as we hoped it would, and we're going to have to learn from that experience to make certain that we don't repeat any of those mistakes, either from the operation itself or from decisions that are made by management or by Sales and Marketing so that we can succeed in this important segment in the future as we create the appropriate product to compete in this segment down the road.

The idea that we should ignore this large and growing segment of the airline industry strikes me as unreasonable. The alternative, which many suggest for United, which is to shrink the mainline back to its core asset, is a conventional, but not really a very attractive, alternative for the majority of the constituents at United.

We have a real opportunity to make United relevant to more customers with the flexibility to track and adapt to the marketplace as the marketplace changes. And that is the core of the plan that we have proposed, and it is the plan that our employees I think will find attractive.

There is no business that I am familiar with that can hide from the market realities as they present themselves to you; regardless of what business we happen to be in. And I didn't hear from anyone last week who thought that a good strategy for United would be to try to ignore the realities of the competitive marketplace including the emergence of the low cost carriers and their increasing market share.

We're going to continue this dialogue this week. You may have heard that I am going to be scheduling domestic visits this week, starting with Chicago on Monday, rather than traveling abroad because I want to continue this dialogue with you hear in the United States before I then schedule trips to talk to your colleagues in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

So I am going to get out to a few more domiciles this coming week, starting in Chicago on Monday afternoon, and I am looking forward to having meetings that are very much like the meetings that we had in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which were as good as I could have hoped they would be.

So for those of you who had the opportunity to attend the meetings in Los Angeles and San Francisco, thanks very much for being there and participating as you did. It was because of your willingness to participate and to stand up and ask open, candid and direct questions, that they were excellent meetings. And I know that Pete McDonald, Doug Hacker and Rosemary Moore and others that were with the traveling party really appreciated your willingness to do so.

I hope to see that that continues this week. And if I don't get the opportunity to see you at the meetings that are scheduled this week, continue to let me hear from you either by e mail or otherwise dropping me a note because these are important times for us and we need to keep the lines of communication open.

Until then, as we said repeatedly during the week, the most important plank of our creditability is our operating performance and you provide us with a tremendous foundation for credibility with all of the groups we talked to. Regardless of who we were talking to last week -- whether it was the mayor of San Francisco, the mayor of Los Angeles or the chambers of commerce in both cities -- we talked about how extraordinary it is that United employees continue to keep their heads up, continue to be proud of their company and continue to perform in an extraordinary way.

All the best, and until I get the opportunity to talk with you again, stay united.