Hi, it's Glenn.  Today is the 10th of August, and I'm calling from Chicago.

Yesterday, we announced that we have substantially completed one of the largest and the most complex components of our restructuring to date -- that being the renegotiation of our aircraft leases.

Through a major agreement with our aircraft financiers and subject to the court approval, we have achieved very substantial cost savings consistent with our business plan, while preserving the reliability and the reach of our global network.

These negotiations have been intensely complicated and time-consuming, both for those involved directly in the discussions and many others throughout United.  This complexity was magnified by changes in the worldwide aircraft marketplace, as well as by the potential repossession of our aircraft.

However, as with every other difficult aspect of our restructuring to date, the results speak to the quality of the work and the quality of the individuals involved in the work.  We have now removed an element of uncertainty from our restructuring, improved the financial profile of the company and cleared another hurdle on the path to exit from Chapter 11.

This is very good news for United, very good news for our constituent groups, and certainly good news for our customers.

And it's only the latest in a series of significant steps toward exit for the company.

In fact, at the very same time that we reached the agreement on our aircraft, we also reached an agreement-in-principle with the City of Chicago to resolve our O'Hare municipal bond dispute.  We are now working to finalize that agreement and to submit it to the Bankruptcy Court for approval.

Resolving our municipal bond issues has also been a highly complex process, involving many bondholders, municipalities, airport authorities, legal disputes and more. 

And we will continue to work through all the remaining issues, just as we are doing here in Chicago.

As you know, and as we have discussed on this call a number of times, we review our restructuring progress and the results of current operations and initiatives and the evolving business plan with our Board of Directors at each meeting. In our most recent board meeting, we devoted the entire session to an in-depth and a detailed review of the business plan and the major initiatives that are key to the successful execution of that plan. 

We started the meeting as we always do with reports from our executive vice presidents on current business performance, including safety.

We then spent the bulk of the time, as I've said, on our business plan, including aspects such as cost management, revenue improvement, the industry and competitive circumstances. 

Rick Poulton then took the Board through a review of an initiative that we call Resource Optimization, which will examine the use of assets and resources across the company to make certain that we are taking maximum advantage of all of the assets and resources available to us. 

The goal, of course, remains the same -- to optimize the revenue that we have available to us within the company, to improve our efficiency and to drive down costs, and to build on the many initiatives that we have underway, such as the FIT program that Katherine Nickel talked to us about on the call last week. 

As I have noted in the past, our Board is very engaged and very involved in the work that we're doing. 

Earlier today, we met, as we also do regularly, with our Creditors' Committee.  We reviewed the business plan in detail with them as well, and we will continue to work with them on all aspects of the restructuring as we head toward exit.

All of this work has put the company in a very good place, as we have reshaped United into a substantially stronger company, able to withstand the challenges of a very, very difficult business environment -- especially with oil priced today at some 63 to 64 dollars.

As I said on a call once removed, some of our competitors today are confronting their own challenges -- not too different than those that we confronted two or three years ago.  But the most important fact for us to remain focused on is that, by making the difficult decisions that we've made and doing the necessary hard work, we have generated now genuine and substantial momentum toward exit as a far more competitive and sustainable business.

In the next call, I hope to have another manager on the call to discuss an initiative in the Maintenance Division very similar to the FIT initiative that Katherine and I discussed last week. Until then, sometime next week, stay focused on our customers, on one another, and stay United.