Hi, it's Glenn and it's the 13th of April. I want to take the occasion to focus this call on two very important events for the company. First, meeting and exceeding our Definite Intent to Repurchase Success Sharing goal for the first quarter. And second, the significant event of the passage of the Pension Funding Equity Act of 2004.
You have exceeded our first-quarter goal for Definite Intent to Repurchase by almost 2 points - by 1.7 points. Your hard work and your quality service resulted in a 38.8 percent performance. In other words, 38.8 percent of customers saying they would definitely fly United again. And you exceeded our on-time performance goal for the quarter by nine points.
These results are a real tribute to your determination and commitment to two things that are important to making us leaders again: constant, continuous, rigorous improvement and a passionate commitment to our customers.
We need to keep the kind of focus on our customer that we have displayed this quarter. It has enabled us to not only meet, but to exceed both of our operational goals for Success Sharing. And, as I said last week, as a result, everyone gets to share in the success that we have earned.
We still see significant opportunity for United to become much better, much more efficient and much more cost competitive in everything that we do.
We are continuing our drive to reduce non-compensation costs especially in light of very high fuel costs. We are also very focused on improving our revenues. And we are making the necessary and targeted investments in our product so that United customers, and the customers that currently fly our competition, choose United.
And we are focused on what remains to be done in our significant restructuring of the company.
We also took an important step forward on Saturday when President Bush signed into law the pension reform that will strengthen the pension plans of millions of American workers, including the employees of our company.
United can and will meet our pension-funding obligations on the standard, non-accelerated timetable, as we have said in the past. It allows us to defer a large portion of these deficit reduction contributions for the next two years. And that will be very helpful to our cash flow.
It also will reduce the amount we must contribute to our pension funds by re-setting the interest rates used to calculate corporate pension-funding requirements.
So, as I conclude the call, I want to extend this company's gratitude once again to the members of Congress who, over many difficult months, have worked tirelessly toward the passage of this legislation.
And I want to take the opportunity on the call to recognize Mark Anderson, Steve Morrissey and the team in Washington, D.C., for their relentless and skillful efforts over the past ten months.
In addition, I want to thank ALPA and the IAM for their extensive efforts. They worked hand in hand with us over the past year visiting members of Congress and others on Capitol Hill and providing resources, advice and support. It was a very good, a very illustrative, cooperative effort that helped us all achieve the result we were looking for.
And finally, and importantly, your voices were heard clearly through United Grassroots Network. In your thousands of calls to senators and representatives, you let them know that this pension relief legislation is important to you and important to United.
And, while the legislation is important, again we will continue to focus on what remains to be done both in our restructuring of the company, and in the operation of our day-to-day business in order for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 and be successful, viable and competitive.
So, in closing, please keep up the tremendous work that you've been doing –- it makes a genuine, positive difference. I'll look forward to our next call. Until then, stay focused, and be united.