November 20, 2006 - Focusing on Our Customers During the Busy Holiday Period

Hi, it's Glenn, it's Monday, the 20th of November and I'm calling today from Chicago. I want to focus today's call on being prepared for the busy holiday travel season in the U.S., and more importantly, the opportunity we have to deliver on our commitment to provide the best possible experience for our customers.

As we all know, we are now in the busiest travel week of the year for our customers flying in the United States.  It is a time when our load factors in the States are exceptionally high, and we have a large number of leisure and infrequent travelers.

Learning from previous experience, when we were not as prepared as we could have been, or should have been... today, we are well prepared, working together as one company.

With a particular focus on our manpower planning across all of our divisions -- from Flight Operations and Onboard Service to Maintenance and Airport Operations -- we will have the right staff to meet the high volume of customers. We also have held preparedness reviews across the system with our United Express partners, the TSA and other important vendors.

We have vastly improved our forecasting -- reviewing numbers of customers and the detail of their travel patterns. On Saturday, when we had a high volume of leisure travelers and people taking extended trips, we added staff in anticipation of a greater volume of baggage and greater transaction times.

The weekend started well with Saturday, thanks to proper planning and execution, and we had no significant line waits systemwide.

As we work our way through the week, we have contingency plans in place to address any staffing, baggage, scheduling issues and even computer outages that may arise. As with all good contingency planning, communication across the company and all employee groups is key, and has been a focus for improvement. We also will be more proactively communicating with our customers, alerting them to any irregular operations, and we're taking steps to ensure they're rebooked as quickly as possible.

Ensuring that we are as prepared as we are today reflects the work of all of our divisions, across the system, working together and focusing on our customers, and putting them first.

For all of you working in reservations, or in our airports, on the front line and onboard, you're the face of United Airlines to our customers. We know the week will undoubtedly present challenges. It will be a busy time, and for many of you, getting our customers where they need to be on time, and most importantly, safely, means that you will be spending time away from your own family. I want to thank you for that, and for the work that you do every day for our customers.

Before I close, given the speculation driven by US Airways' proposal to acquire Delta, I'll take a moment to comment on consolidation in context of the industry.

As you all know, we have been consistent for many years in our view that consolidation should happen and that airlines should be allowed to make business decisions on the same basis as other global industries, such as banking, telecommunications or energy.

This week's news has not changed our position at United, and should an opportunity present itself, we will take advantage of it, if we and we alone decide to.

United is now in a solid position.  We'll continue to strengthen our core businesses to compete most effectively in the future competitive landscape, whatever that might look like.

That's what we've been doing, and that is what we are going to continue to do.

That's exactly, for example, what our focus will be this week -- running a great airline.

And, as I say every time on all of these calls, we'll stay focused on our customers, we'll stay focused on one another…and we will stay united.Happy holidays to all of those in the U.S., and I'll be talking to you again soon.