Hi this is Glenn, and it's Monday, August 18. I think you'll all understand that this is going to be a one-topic call.

I want to take the opportunity to personally and very sincerely thank everyone across the company for your extraordinary efforts in response to the power outage to hit the Northeast on Thursday of last week. By Saturday morning, our operations at all airports affected were almost completely back to normal because of your good work.

The people of United came together as a dedicated team to ease passengers' travel experiences in a very difficult -- and, at the outset, very uncertain and very tense -- situation. Moments after the news came in, we had a page out to our operations crisis team and just minutes later the crisis team here at World Headquarters was fully operational.

The wheels were set in motion to keep our customers updated. A press release was already in draft form outlining what had happened and how United was responding. Announcements were made at the airports. Updates were prepared for the web site. And what was the main message? That United would take care of customers who were heavily impacted by this extraordinary event.

Procedures were quickly developed and communicated to all customer-facing personnel to ensure they knew how to handle customer concerns, re-bookings and potential flight cancellations. Reservations, Consumer Relations, Inventory Management and Public Relations worked hard to put out a waiver so anyone affected on the flight would have the ability to call in and reschedule their flight for a later date with no penalty to the customer.

At the airports, we informed ground and flight crews about how to manage the situation the best they could. Government Affairs and I were in immediate communication with the FAA, the Air Transport Association and government officials at the federal level, as well as those in the affected local regions, to ensure our actions were appropriate to correspond to the potential and to the situation as it evolved. And the list goes on and on.

Just as impressive, was how all of you at the airports, on the front line, approached this situation with incredible personal efficiency and personal resourcefulness to ensure that our passengers were informed, they were fed and they were as comfortable as possible, while the company worked as quickly as possible to return to full service.

You can see in today's NewsReal a few examples of how people at a number of the airports and at our Reservations Center in Detroit rose to the challenge. Nonetheless, it's worth relating a couple.

At JFK, where we experienced more of the impact, on Thursday night, about 700 customers were stranded. Employees at JFK worked with the Airport Authority to find cots and with vendors to provide stranded customers with meals. They also got very creative and were able to salvage some food and put it on dry ice. Ground crews, Maintenance, Onboard and Flight Ops made sure the crews were shuttled back and forth to the hotels and were in a position to be ready for Friday departures.

At LaGuardia, during the outage, we actually got five departures out, and at JFK, nine departed. Crews at both airports used air stairs and flashlights to meet the inbound arrivals. Customers were checked in using our manual backup procedures, handwriting tickets, physically searching bags and even using the O'Hare Help Desk to check in entire trips.

Those of us who were watching the media coverage, can remember how, at a certain point, the television networks began broadcasting a map that illustrated how connected seemingly far-flung parts of the power grid actually are.

If you'll recall, it showed how a power line hitting a tree in Ohio could have an impact on New York City apartment buildings and airports. It demonstrated that Niagara-Mohawk Power Plant's efforts to come back online in northern New York could actually help restore power in areas as far away as Detroit.

To me, the situation highlighted that our organization is no different in a way: everyone, working together, affects everything that the rest of us must do to create whatever that desirable result should be.

It was an extraordinary effort all around, in circumstances that underscored not only the connectivity that I just spoke to a moment ago, but also what we are all capable of doing when we all pull together. Again, thank you and take a moment to congratulate yourselves and one another.

It's all the more extraordinary, given the circumstances the company faces every day and the complexities we deal with every day. It is very much like three-dimensional chess: every move we make is important, and when a new situation, such as the blackout, challenges us on one front, we don't get to pause on any of the other, multiple fronts we're working on.

Flights from San Francisco to Narita need to get out on time. We don't pause in our negotiations either with the city of Denver in the Denver airport, nor with our discussions and negotiations with Atlantic Coast Airlines just to name a couple. And, of course, we still need to book flights for the fall, and we still need to get people very excited about 'Go. Go. Stay.' as we generate revenue for the balance of the year with this exciting promotion.

It goes to show that when the people of United focus on the tasks before us, together, we can't be beat. So, in closing the call, keep this focus, remain United, look forward to talking with you again next week. And once again, thanks to everybody for pulling together.