Hi, this is Glenn and it’s Monday, the 21st of July.

I’d like to give you a quick update on my visit last week to Washington, D.C. I spent several days there speaking with elected officials about the progress that the company is making as we move toward a successful exit from Chapter 11.

But, before I do, I want to take a moment to tell everyone on the call how encouraged I am by both the positive impact of our sales and marketing efforts and our June customer satisfaction results.

A tremendous array of initiatives launched over the past couple of months is helping to improve our unit revenue performance. For example, as of last Friday, a little over a week after we launched our "Travel the World" promotion, registrations had climbed to more than 60,000 -- an extraordinary number, considering that they are all international bookings. Our June load factor, as you know, was an all-time record for United.

Customer-repurchase intent is up. As you saw in NewsReal last week, for those of you who pay close attention to it, according to Marketrak's June report, United achieved its best first-half-year results for intent since the airline began measuring this in 1996.

All of this taken together -- the load factor, the improving revenue, the apparent lessening of the SARS effect and the way that customers are responding to the experience we are providing them
-- is clear evidence that we are on the way back to the position that is rightful for this company.

So congratulations to you all. And yet more progress being made through your good, hard work every day.

Now let me turn my attention to my Washington visit. One of the reasons I was there was to participate in a larger conversation that is taking place in the Bush administration and in Congress about a matter of economic importance to the country -– pension funding.

As you probably have seen in the media, this issue is of deep interest on Capitol Hill. In fact, the Department of the Treasury recently described it as their number-one priority.

The reason for all of this interest is that companies in many industries, such as automotive, airlines, steel and chemical, are facing difficulties in funding their existing pension obligations.

This is –- as we know at United -- the result of a "perfect storm" of conditions, including a four-year slump in the economy, a dramatic decline in stock price and interest rates at lower levels than we’ve seen in decades.

As a result, many companies’ pension plans have become under-funded -- in other words the gap between their pension plans’ assets and liabilities has increased dramatically.

In addition, current regulations require companies with under-funded pension plans to make significant accelerated payments to their plans to reduce this liability.

And while this is an issue for the economy as a whole, there has been an even greater impact in the airline industry. That's because of factors such as the decline in business travel, the after-effects of 9/11, the war with Iraq and the SARS virus -- conditions that we are all very familiar with. The current administration and members of Congress have put forward legislative proposals that would go at least part way toward resolving these pension funding issues.

They provide some temporary relief to the short-term burden of these obligations.

But, many labor unions and businesses, including United, agree that more needs to be done.

I was in Washington with our government affairs team for this reason. We have been working closely with other airlines, our unions -– including ALPA, which has taken a leadership role in this effort -– and the AFL-CIO, in support of a pension proposal specifically for our industry.

The core of this proposal temporarily allows affected airlines to defer certain pension funding contributions and smoothes out minimum funding requirements over a longer period of time.

If passed, this proposal would help the airline industry get through this extreme and very unusual economic cycle.

I want to reiterate an important point made by ALPA during a meeting we attended together . The point was that this is a team effort by labor and management across the airline industry, and this united front has made a big difference.

I had good meetings with a number of members of Congress on this issue. But I also have to say that, coming out of those meetings, there are varying perceptions in Washington on how to approach the resolution of this problem.

At this moment, there is opposition from some important members of Congress to legislative provisions specific to any one particular industry.

United's government affairs team is going to continue pushing hard on this, and I'm heading back to Washington later this week to press for support on this issue on Capitol Hill.

As for United's pension plans specifically, they are among the cash liabilities that our business plan has to face. It is essential that our business plan enable us to generate enough cash to pay for our obligations, including our pensions.

These funding obligations have been built up over the last several years. Moving forward, through our new collective bargaining agreements we did reduce our future pension obligations to some extent.

And, because of the good work under way in reducing our costs and improving revenues -- which are the key components of our cash flow -- we're in a more favorable position than before as we begin the process of assessing what we will need to do regarding our remaining liabilities. Those decisions are going to be made when we're further along in the restructuring process.

I'll keep you posted and I'll update you as this issue unfolds in Washington. In the meantime, I'll be speaking to you again soon and, until then, as always, remain focused and stay united.