Hi this is Glenn.

I've got the opportunity today to record a somewhat different type of call. On this call I'm going to introduce to you our new Executive Vice President-Customer John Tague. And I'm going to simply take a moment to explain to you why I think that John is the perfect candidate, the perfect executive, for United at this moment in United's history.

We have, as all of you know, been working very, very hard to give ourselves the opportunity to compete in the market by setting our cost structure in a competitive context. We've worked very hard with all of the employee groups, we've worked successfully with union leadership to put together a collective bargaining agreement package for all of the labor groups that affords us that opportunity. I know that all of you, in addition to the executive team here, are very proud of the work that we've done.

We also continue to work very hard on other elements of cost. The Business Transformation Office is making great progress, and we continue to monitor that progress, and we are ahead of plan in generating cash, saving expense, realizing means by which we work more effectively, and finding occasions to generate incremental revenue.

And it's that last piece that really serves me perfectly to introduce John to you. John understands this business, he understands the customers in this business, he understands our competitors in the business, and, as he likes to say, he has competed against United, and that gives him a unique perspective on our company, a little different from our own. Having him here now, with us, as someone who has so effectively competed against this company is going to be a real asset to us.

John has already, in one week, established an impact in the company. He's working very collaboratively with his partner, Pete McDonald, and you may have noticed here on NewsReal recently, they have already announced an organizational change that I think is going to be very significant for the company.

They have announced that we're going to have a Worldwide Sales organization reporting to John, and that Worldwide Sales organization is going to be headed up by Graham Atkinson. And they've announced that we're going to have a Worldwide Airport Operations organization that is going to report to Larry De Shon.

I just want to tell you that I couldn't think of a better combination of executive talent than John Tague, Pete McDonald, Larry De Shon and Graham Atkinson to manage and to guide us through that significant combination of responsibilities.

I'll close here, before turning it over to John, by sharing something that we talked about in the board meeting yesterday. There are all types of marketing messages. There are marketing messages that John likes to say we pay for, and that's called advertising. And there are marketing messages that we are delivering all the time that we don't know that we are delivering and that we don't really pay for, and those are the ones that we represent in the contact we have with our customers.

By having the customer-contact part of the business closely aligned and associated with the customer-messaging part of the business – even if we pay for it through advertising – by having John and Pete and Larry and Graham connected, and all four of them thinking about delivering one message, that's what I want to see United do. I want to see United deliver one marketing message all the time, and I want us all to know that we're all responsible for delivering it. So, with that, I want to turn this over to John Tague, and I'm proud to introduce him to you.

John Tague: Thanks very much, Glenn. I appreciate the introduction and support, and I hope that I will live up to it in the future. During my discussions with Glenn and the leadership team about the significant opportunity that became available for me to join United, it became apparent to me that there was a lot more good work going on here than the people on the outside of the organization realize.

The quality of the leadership and the management of the process and the quality of the customer care being delivered each and every day by those of you who touch our customers out there in what I like to call the real world where they live, as opposed to where we live, was really an exceptional story. And that not only did United have a tremendous historical and legacy brand to build on throughout its long and proud history, but it was doing very good work today from a leadership perspective and very good work in terms of how we touched and dealt with our customer interactions each and every moment of their experience with United Airlines. And that's what encouraged me, in part, to think that this was such a tremendous opportunity to be able to work with a brand such as this.

As I've said this week, I've spent my entire career having a brand and product envy for what United brought to the marketplace. And I don't think we should be bashful about establishing that with the consumer. We produce a very high quality brand. We should speak with a voice of confidence about the services, the people who provide them and the products that we put into the marketplace.

Clearly, we have some things to fix, and we will begin to address those. One of those areas is our Reservations service levels, where our folks have just been doing a tremendous job trying to keep up with, frankly, a bow wave of a variety of customer demands that we've just not been able to manage terribly well. We greatly appreciate their efforts, individually, and they are certainly not accountable. Unfortunately, they deal with the results of our non-performance when they speak to disappointed customers who have had to wait too long to receive the kind of service that they have a right to expect when dealing with a brand and a company of our quality.

With Glenn's aggressive support, we were pleased to be able to move through yesterday a program that will improve the situation over the next 90 days, and bring it to a close 90 days from now with the addition of several hundred Reservations personnel. This is an exciting opportunity to us to deliver the service levels that United customers have come to expect, and to provide the necessary relief and support to the individuals in the Reservations organization.

It also represents an opportunity for many of the people who are being reassigned as a result of changes occurring in other areas of the organization to have an opportunity to stay with the United family. And that's an encouraging and a very good thing to be able to reach out and tap people who know us, know who we are, and allow them to join the telephone sales organization and be the front-facing voice to our customers.

We will be working very aggressively over the next several days. It is very clear that United does a tremendous number of things right and has for a number of years. As I like to say, we have a great toolbox of products, services and marketing skills and customer skills. We need to apply those things that are differentiable and clearly United's strengths in the marketplace. We have much, much to be proud of –- you, far more than I. I don't have much to be proud of in a week, other than that I managed to find the building through accurate directions the first day, and it just looked awfully danged big to me, from where I come from.

But, having said that, we do have an opportunity and a reason to speak with confidence and to speak forward-looking into the marketplace. The past is the past and the future is ours to change and that's the approach we are going to take. The one thing that I hope to bring with this team here, is to take those legacy skills and those tremendous strengths and benefits and make them more agile and fast-moving and responsive to the marketplace.

We intend to quicken the pace at which we, not only in our reputation, but the pace at which we innovate and lead in the next 12 to 18 months in the marketplace, as opposed to simply execute what others have created. So it's very, very important that we get our creativity and our service focus moving and energized and bring United back to a leadership position with its core customers in the marketplace. And we need to reconnect with those people.

I've been tremendously reassured this week by what I would characterize as a non-commercial relationship with many of our fliers. They have an emotional connection to this brand and the service you provide, and we need to build on that. Many folks have looked at my background and the products and segments that I have focused on and been responsible for and, I think, read more into that about the direction of United than would be appropriate.

Clearly I've had substantial involvement with low-fare, low-cost operators. And, as Glenn has mentioned, I've had some success competing against United, and I've been kicked in the tail from time to time by United over the last several years. I would not draw any conclusions by that experience that that is directional in nature, in terms of what United needs to do in the future. Clearly, in order for us to be successful, we have to maintain a premier level of quality and service in the eyes of the market.

It is true that air travel today is more of a commodity than it was five, six, eight, 10 years ago. But nevertheless, it is not all a commodity. And we will have to develop a segmented range of products and services that is fair and representative of what should be delivered to commodity-type buyers, but also that doesn't, in effect, dumb down our product to the lowest common denominator in the marketplace, but rather gives our high-value customers what they've come to expect and deserve from United Airlines.

So, we'll be meeting this weekend, throughout the marketing organization, to begin to tackle this issue. I would expect and hope that you will begin to feel the initial effects of a very aggressive effort to hold ourselves accountable over the long haul, for United to return to, not only its fair share of the revenue marketplace in the United States, but a preferred and a premium share.

I look forward to working you and with Pete. He's a tremendous leader in the organization, as I'm sure those of you in the organization who have worked with him know, and I've already realized that in the first week. And I'm highly confident that together, with your support and Glenn and his team's leadership, we can get this job done and bring this airline back to one that justifies the pride that you all most assuredly have in it. Take care and have a wonderful week.

Glenn: Thanks, John, I appreciate that very much and I will tell you that in the future, when the occasion presents itself, and John and I are in the same place at the same time, we'll take the opportunity to do this again. That's all for now. We'll be talking to you again soon as the circumstances warrant and as the opportunity presents itself to us. In the meantime, stay United and keep your heads up.