Hi, it's Glenn, it's Monday, November 15, and I am calling from the office in Chicago.

Today, I have asked Graham Atkinson, our senior vice president of Worldwide Sales & Alliances, to join me on the call. And, I have asked Graham to provide all of us with an update on the progress that he and his global sales team are making in their contribution to both our restructuring and our transformation to a performance culture.

In the days and weeks ahead, I am going to ask Rick Poulton, United's senior vice president for Strategic Sourcing and Business-improvement initiatives, and Larry De Shon, senior vice president of Worldwide Airport Operations, to do likewise – to share their personal commitment and accountability to improving the way we do business at United; and the cost reduction and profit improvement that they, and their teams, must accomplish to contribute to the overall performance culture that United will create to win in the marketplace.

I think it's important for us to continue to share such plans on the call; to share progress and our commitment with all United employees during this extremely challenging time in our restructuring to clearly establish that everyone in the company is committed and accountable to play their part in delivering against the goals and objectives we have set ourselves.

All this work is included in our overall business and financial plan that has been shared and discussed with our board of directors, our creditors’ committee, our labor leadership, our DIP lenders, the DIP syndicate and with our banks.

The feedback we have received is consistent: if we are able to achieve the financial objectives which we have targeted in the plan, we will create a finance-able, viable company … a company in which an employee will look forward to shares in the new company, profit sharing, success sharing, and – most of all – a personal association with a winning company. All of which will enable employees to participate in the benefits of our success.

We have excellent assets and a great opportunity to transform United. It will take time, but a performance-based United will be a formidable and successful competitor.

So, Graham, please bring us up-to-date on your progress and what is happening in Worldwide Sales.

Graham Atkinson:

Thanks Glenn. Good day everybody. I wanted to update you, as Glenn said, on some recent sales activities the Sales Division and I have been engaged in. I think as many of you know, we continue to work on the sales transformation – transforming our division and targeting a step change improvement in processes, in skill levels and in organization. This is an essential business initiative if we are to meet the company's revenue challenge going forward.

As part of that, this week I was in the field, holding quarterly sales accountability meetings, with our sales teams in Los Angeles and Denver, discussing our third-quarter sales results and focusing our accountability on insuring we meet our year-end goals. I’m delighted to report that we’ve had some recent, very noticeable sales successes, in terms of corporate contract wins. As you know, this is typically a lengthy cycle, but we’ve actually brought three very significant contracts to conclusion in the last few weeks, and I think each of these speak volumes, really, for the credibility that the company continues to build with some very discriminating travel buyers. These people have a lot of options; they’re very focused on procurement, and they don’t make these decisions lightly.

Now, these are confidential agreements so I can't tell you the names of the companies involved right now. But, I can tell you that the value of these three contracts is worth more than $130 million dollars to United over five years. And, we concluded these with help from our Star Alliance partners.

While I was in Denver and L.A., I also had the chance to have two of our regular customer advisory group meetings, where we invite our top corporate customers to tell us what they think of the job we’re doing, provide feedback on our business relationship and our product. I have to say that the feedback was very positive and constructive, both in terms of the sales process and how we can do better, but also in terms of the product. They were most complimentary about their experience and the experiences of their colleagues with our company.

People are giving us really very high marks for the execution on the front line. Of course, we all know that it’s a team effort, but it was very heartening to hear the fact that, despite everything we are going through internally, their level of satisfaction is so high.

Finally, I just wanted to talk about another initiative we were working on this week with our distribution strategy group. On Tuesday, we invited a couple of our very top accounts to headquarters to discuss in-depth our cost of sales initiatives and our unfolding sales distribution landscape. This, of course, affects our corporate accounts. We had really two excellent sessions, and I can say that we are very much aligned with many of our top customers in terms of the efficiencies we need to make in this area, which will help us not only to realize substantial savings, but will give our corporate accounts a much better deal in the process – a great win-win.

There is no doubt in my mind that United is on the cutting edge of this change, and we intend to proactively test some new concepts. Overall, very productive and constructive meetings and a very busy week in Sales. Back to you Glenn.

Glenn:

As Graham and I, and other members of the leadership team, have said on the Leadership Call that we engage in every Friday, we talked about the full nature of our communication with our constituents. And, I think it's very important for all of us to realize that the dialogue with our customers begins long before we see them on board. And, although the onboard experience is a payoff for them along with their seamless travel throughout the United States and abroad on the United and Star Alliance network, it's backed by that which Graham and his team have promised. They do an excellent and competitive job setting up that promise for the rest of us to deliver upon by having these relationships with our corporate customers well before we see them in the concourse or at check-in.

So, perhaps for all of us who have never really understood just what our Sales Division does and how they establish a relationship with the customer, it's important that we think about this when we see our customers on board and when we travel throughout the system.

With that, Graham, I appreciate very much you joining me on the call. And, Graham and I both appreciate all of your hard work. Until the next call when I have Rick Poulton join me, keep focused and stay United.