CHICAGO: ORD & MDW discussion

[ardecila]

More cheap flights out of ORD is good news to me...

[trvlr70]

Originally Posted by ardecila

More cheap flights out of ORD is good news to me...

I bet this will never happen. Frontier is struggling. They keep trying to find a route network and identity within the US that works and things are changing constantly. Last year, it was Trenton. But now that's been scaled back. Before that, Kansas City. Milwaukee before that.

The airline will probably fail before any realistic hub at ORD will have any impact.

[Steely Dan]

^ yep. count me as vastly underwhelmed by this allegedly "oh shit" major announcement that still has yet to be confirmed by any published source.

even if it is eventually confirmed, it's frontier, they have yet to find any formula that really works.

[N830MH]

Originally Posted by k1052

T5 supposedly.

The aviation department might want to get on adding that planned terminal on the heating plant site or expanding T5 sooner rather than later. Though two more gates in L will be freed up when AA divests to close the merger.

I think Spirit or VX will take those 2 gates.

[Dracmus]

Originally Posted by trvlr70

I bet this will never happen. Frontier is struggling. They keep trying to find a route network and identity within the US that works and things are changing constantly. Last year, it was Trenton. But now that's been scaled back. Before that, Kansas City. Milwaukee before that.

The airline will probably fail before any realistic hub at ORD will have any impact.

They are expanding at CLE but that is mainly a result of United pulling the hub. Frontier needs to be careful and not over-reach or they will fail as a result. Over-expansion has killed many airlines in the past. In the case of CLE though, chances are it will work because they are going to several places that were cut out by United (or are the major markets like Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and so on). However, that wouldn't work so well at ORD simply because there are many more airlines and many of them have overlapping networks. That and gate space is rather cramped at ORD in the first place given that United AND AA have hubs there.

[FrankDaTank]

Long time lurker, first time poster ….

I thought you all might find this interesting. A couple months back, airchive.com, a commercial aviation news website, did a multi-part story about the history of O’Hare. I know this thread is focused on the ongoing expansion at O’Hare, but I though some historical context might add to the conversation.

Here are links to the three parts:
Part 1 - The Fascinating History Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport: 1920-1960
Part 2 - The Fascinating History Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport: 1960-2000
Part 3 - The Fascinating History Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport: 2000 to Present

As a teaser for the piece, here is a picture of the funky runway layout that was part of a 1948 plan for the airport.

Drawing of the Ultimate Stage of Burke’s 1948 Master Plan
Credit: Ralph Burke, Orchard “Douglas” Field, Master Plan, 1948
http://airchive.com/blog/2014/04/07/...ohare-history/

[Tom In Chicago]

^Welcome to the forums. . . I've seen other renderings of similar layouts for O'Hare as it was originally planned. . . interesting concept, but hard to see how that would be very practical. . .

. . .

[N830MH]

Did they construction new terminal 4 & 6? So, when is that? ORD hasn't constructed new terminal 4 & extension the terminal 5, as well.

[C.]

With the airport physically expanding, has there been any recent land annexations of neighboring municipalities by the city of Chicago to keep with historical president of keeping O'Hare entirely within its municipal boundaries? I'm thinking specifically of Elk Grove and Bensenville. Have the communities deannexed any of their land and ceded it over to Chicago? As a Geography major, I find this stuff fascinating!

[denizen467]

^ Just happened for the far south runway. A swath of Bensenville was engulfed by Chicago, all the homes levelled, and all the residential streets erased. It's very roughly the stretch of land between Irving Park Road's alignment through 2012 and its new alignment (although there is a rail realignment, and a future highway, in there as well, along with residential north of Irving Park too). You can see old Irving Park on Bing's satellite view (with the new alignments under construction), and new Irving Park on Google's satellite view. You can even see all the houses and streets still standing there using Bing's "bird's-eye" view, at least until Microsoft updates it. Too bad the residential maps are gone - the streets had aviation related names like "O'Hare Court". If you want the gory backstory, you could search "joseph karaganis" as he was Bensenville's lawyer fighting this for eons.

Bonus easter egg: (Okay, it's a bug.) You can still trick Google Street View into showing you streetside scenes from parts of former Bensenville residential neighborhoods that are now a desolate runway or the like. How eerie is that?

[Kngkyle]

Relaying some interesting statistics from Airliners.net over here:

This shows the difference in daily seats, flights, and seats per flight this year over last year. One caveat this year is the US + AA merger has helped to inflate the AA numbers, however US had a relatively small operation at ORD so much of this is indeed growth.

ORD/UA
Seats: 59300 (+4.6%)
Flights: 672 (+2.0%)
Seats per Flight: 88.2 (+2.6%)

ORD/AA
Seats: 47600 (+11.6%)
Flights: 519 (+2.8%)
Seats per Flight: 91.7 (+8.5%)

For comparison sake, here's the 10 largest hubs in the US:

Hub..........Seats.....YoY.....Flights.....YoY...Seat/Dep.....YoY
ATL/DL.....134000.....1.3%.....982.....-4.3%.....136.5.....5.8%
DFW/AA...95600.....5.7%.....827.....2.5%.....115.6.....3.1%
CLT/AA.....70400.....3.4%.....671.....2.4%.....104.9.....1.0%
ORD/UA.....59300.....4.6%.....672.....2.0%.....88.2.....2.6%
IAH/UA.......59200.....0.7%.....620.....0.3%.....95.4.....0.4%
MSP/DL.....49800.....0.2%.....457.....-4.6%.....108.9.....5.1%
MIA/AA.......47900.....4.3%.....332.....4.1%.....144.4.....0.2%
ORD/AA.....47600.....11.6%.....519.....2.8%.....91.7.....8.5%
DTW/DL.....46800.....-5.1%.....488.....-10.0%.....95.9.....5.4%
EWR/UA.....46200.....0.8%.....430.....0.2%.....107.3.....0.6%

More stats can be found http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/6136788/

------

A few things to take away:

- UA + AA at ORD is still smaller than DL at ATL.
- ORD is now larger than IAH in terms of both flights and passengers. (IAH held onto the passenger title last year)
- The increases in seats per flight show that the reductions in smaller regional jets is starting to go into full swing, thankfully.
- The reduction in smaller regional jets has not led to a reduction in flights, telling us that the flights are simply being flown on larger planes.
- If the upgauging (using larger planes) of flights continues to the point where average seats per flight amount to the equivalent of the AA operations at DFW and UA operation at EWR, then that alone will add 7 million annual passengers without a single flight being added.

[trvlr70]

Nobody seems to have a clue with what direction the new AA/US will take in Chicago.

[Kngkyle]

Frontier has been slowly growing at O'Hare as they slowly acquire more gates. United and American look to be cutting flights - although probably not capacity - since they are getting rid of the 50-seat jets.

Frontier destinations now include:

Cleveland, Washington, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Montego Bay, Punta Cana, Liberia

[N830MH]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

Frontier has been slowly growing at O'Hare as they slowly acquire more gates. United and American look to be cutting flights - although probably not capacity - since they are getting rid of the 50-seat jets.

Frontier destinations now include:

Cleveland, Washington, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Montego Bay, Punta Cana, Liberia

Yeah, I bet they did. They want to get a larger jet instead of 50-seat jets. They want to change.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

United and American look to be cutting flights - although probably not capacity - since they are getting rid of the 50-seat jets.

AA/US lost gates due to the merger deal struck with the DOJ, but they are adding bigger regional jets as fast as they can during the summer season as is UA. Winter schedules will start to take affect next month at UA and AA, so you will see a slight decrease in flights.


Also major work is underway on the west side of O'hare up Thorndale for the Elgin O'hare Expressway. They sawed down thousands of trees and are moving dirt in a big way all the way up to
route 83.

The airlines don't want to admit it, but it is time to start looking at a new domestic terminal expansion. The original old terminals are very tight together and can get very congested. Also the airlines are running out of space to expand. The newer 1980's UA terminal has enough room but UA and AA need more regional and narrow body terminal areas. It's really packed in the middle of the domestic concourses.

[Kngkyle]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

AA/US lost gates due to the merger deal struck with the DOJ, but they are adding bigger regional jets as fast as they can during the summer season as is UA. Winter schedules will start to take affect next month at UA and AA, so you will see a slight decrease in flights.


Also major work is underway on the west side of O'hare up Thorndale for the Elgin O'hare Expressway. They sawed down thousands of trees and are moving dirt in a big way all the way up to
route 83.

The airlines don't want to admit it, but it is time to start looking at a new domestic terminal expansion. The original old terminals are very tight together and can get very congested. Also the airlines are running out of space to expand. The newer 1980's UA terminal has enough room but UA and AA need more regional and narrow body terminal areas. It's really packed in the middle of the domestic concourses.

UA and AA have an abundance of regional and narrow body gates. Their gate utilization is nowhere near what it was during the peak when O'Hare was handling 20% more passengers per year. The reduction of regionals in favor of larger but less frequent planes will open up more gate space as well.

Widebody gate space is what is lacking. Terminal 5 is just about maxed out at peak times. That is where the expansion is needed - and luckily T5 can be expanded without costing billions. But neither AA or UA really want to fund it partly because they'd rather get customs in their terminals instead.

If a Western Terminal is ever built, I hope it's a new international terminal to replace T5 - with an air-side connection to all of the domestic terminals.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

UA and AA have an abundance of regional and narrow body gates. Their gate utilization is nowhere near what it was during the peak when O'Hare was handling 20% more passengers per year. The reduction of regionals in favor of larger but less frequent planes will open up more gate space as well.

Widebody gate space is what is lacking. Terminal 5 is just about maxed out at peak times. That is where the expansion is needed - and luckily T5 can be expanded without costing billions. But neither AA or UA really want to fund it partly because they'd rather get customs in their terminals instead.

If a Western Terminal is ever built, I hope it's a new international terminal to replace T5 - with an air-side connection to all of the domestic terminals.

Kngkyle, you are both right and wrong. They do need international widbody gates very badly, and having them go to the domestic gates after they deplane does take up space at the airlines terminals.

I work for someone that has done studies on how bad alley traffic is at ORD on the domestic gates, and part of the problem is how tight the concourse is in relation to the amount of traffic and gates. I think you work in the city international ramp control tower, and that is why you have a slight bias towards a new international terminal and you are right, they need it. I see both and can see problems on both sides. Statistics can only go so far, trust me. Real world annalysis is a must to figure out problems. Regionals used to park without jetbridges back in the 1980's and 1990's but now require pushbacks at all gates wich takes extra time and space.


I also think the FAA should have put departures on the outside runways and arrivals on the inside runways since departures take the most delays and arrivals that don't have a gate can get off the taxiway and go to the penalty box, but that was driven by real estate more than anything. Departure runway taxiways full of aircraft block arrivals coming over from the outside arrival runway.


One more thing, less passengers does not mean less flights, just smaller planes. 20% less pax is irrelevant to ramp congestion.

[kbud]

You are both correct. I live in Milwaukee but fly through ORD once a month internationally to Europe and Asia (primarily on United and Star Alliance). The problem is that ORD has not continued to work forward on expanding and improving the terminals to handle today's jets and internatinal growth. The last expansion was T5 back in the early 90s.
- T1 - Can't handle A380 (Lufthansa) or the 787 as a base until major electrical work is done (I've read this, not sure it's true), and lack more widebody gates. If the 787s come, they can't fit in the 767 gates because of their wingspan.
- T2 - Has to be rated as one of the worst terminals in the US.
- T5 - Space constrained inside, lack additional gates to handle new growth at peak times, and can't handle A380s.

The international growth has been good the last few years, but ORD is now going to be limited and will cost a lot of revenue to the city by limiting additional international flights. LAX, SFO, DFW, Houston, ATL, Detroit, JFK and Toronto all have newer international facilities or planned new ones. The sad part is that it takes years for things to get approved for ORD so we won't be seeing anything new for probably 5+ years. I wish they'd seriously revisit the plan for a new T4 (AA and One World Partners for Int'l), new T6 for Delta and SkyTeam, and redoing T2 for UA and Star Partners for Int'l).

[BVictor1]

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/wireSto...rport-25751643

O'Hare Reclaims Title as World's Busiest Airport
CHICAGO — Sep 25, 2014, 9:57 AM ET

Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has reclaimed its title as the world's busiest airport for the first time since 2004.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the announcement Wednesday in Chicago during the World Routes 2014 convention, which the mayor's office described as the largest business-to-business aviation event.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, more than 580,000 flights departed or landed at O'Hare from January to August.

International passenger volume is up 8 percent at O'Hare in the first half of the year, the mayor's office said.

[N830MH]

I think it's time to redevelopment the O'Hare terminal and they have to start construction new T4 & T6, as well. I think that they will have extend the concourse L gates. They need more gate space and terminal 1 & 3 have to be redevelopment.