Hello, this is Jane Allen with an update for Friday, February 6, 2004.
There was good news about our operation this week, and that will have a positive impact on the first quarter of our Success Sharing plan. Success Sharing is our new performance incentive plan that will give employees cash awards when the company reaches its operational goals for the quarter and its financial goals for the year. The two operational goals are on time :00 and customer intent to repurchase. On the on-time front, despite some very difficult weather in January, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, United's departure on-time :00 performance for the month was 61.6 percent. That's more than 4.4 points above our January goal, which puts us on track to meet our first-quarter on-time Success Sharing goal of 60 percent.
This is a very encouraging start to the first quarter of Success Sharing. Thanks to all of you for setting a firm foundation we can build on. We won't know January results for customer intent to repurchase, the second of our quarterly Success Sharing goals, for another 10 days-but we'll share them with you as soon as we have that information. In the meantime, keep up the good work.
As you may have seen, Ted is in the news. In fact, Ted is the news. Even before United's low-cost operation takes off from Denver on February 12th, we have set our sights on some new horizons. United announced this week that Ted flying will to Washington Dulles in April. On April 7, Ted will inaugurate new service to Ft. Lauderdale and take on three existing United routes…to Las Vegas, Tampa and Orlando. Ted's initial Dulles schedule of three roundtrips per day will quickly expand to 15 roundtrips per day by May 13. Those flights will represent 22 percent of United's U.S. domestic service from Dulles. Tickets for Ted flights our of Dulles fo on sale this Saturday.
Another topic I want to touch on this week are some new communications tools we are launching as part of our ongoing efforts to respond to your feedback about what you want and need from the division.
Beginning Feb. 9, Onboard employees can elect to have important news sent to the e-mail address of your choice, no matter where you are. If you choose, Onboard will send important divisional communications to you while at home, on the road or at United locations. These communications include Onboard Updates, my weekly Update, the Purser Bulletin and special alerts. Many Onboard employees previously had elected to receive corporate communications via personal e-mail addresses, and they now will receive our division news as well. If you are not currently on the corporate e-mail address list and would like to join, see the Feb. 2 edition of Onboard Updates for details on how to sign up.
Also this month, we are launching a new monthly flight attendant newsletter containing catering and marketing information. This publication, which will be named by division employees, will replace the bi-monthly briefing packet. The first edition will be included in the Feb. 9 Onboard Updates. We look forward to hearing your feedback on both of these new sources of company news.
Before closing, I'd like to relate a remarkable achievement by Hong Kong-based Purser Kyle Sy. On a recent flight from Hong Kong to Narita, HKGCS handed two selectees to Kyle. Both the CSR and Kyle talked to these customers to ensure they understood that they were to see Kyle on arrival for their travel documents, and that an arrival agent would escort them to immigration.
On arrival the two customers had disappeared. After briefing the arrival agent, Kyle rushed to immigration to look for them. After searching through the long lines at immigration twice, Kyle finally spotted the two individuals, who had taken steps to alter their appearance. Kyle quickly pointed them out to the CSR, who alerted the Japan Immigration Officers. The two customers were using different passports, not under their names, with valid visas to enter Japan. They were quickly detained by immigration for deportation. Kyle's going the extra mile to find these customers prevented the possibility that United could have been fined by immigration. Great work, Kyle!
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.