CHICAGO: ORD & MDW discussion

[nergie]

Originally Posted by denizen467

Looking ahead: After 2015, will ORD be the only airport in the world with enough horizontal separation to comfortably and continuously land 4 flights simultaneously?

And could they end up doing any operations this way? Or will departure capacity, or something else, preclude that?

I love driving northern LSD and looking up and seeing 3 parallel armadas of passenger jets coming in off Lake Michigan, ever since the far north runway opened five years ago. Now just imagine 4 of them.

Denver has enough space but the 6 runways are laid out in pin-wheel so they can have simultaneous departures and arrivals on parallel runways regardless of wind direction.

[denizen467]

Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum

This is an informed guess, but I'm under the impression that DFW has a ridonkulous amount of separation between their runways. Given the demand, they could land like 300 plans an hour there or something.

Per satellite view, it doesn't look much different from other airports. (I'm considering only the big group of parallel runways - if you include the one pair that's at an angle, then yeah, but I'm not sure you can pack in arrival streams simultaneously on non-parallel runways. Or maybe you can??)

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

That new south runway 10C/28C has a strange approach pattern due to it being to close to the next runway 10L/28R. The city can brag but that new runway will have some restrictions due to that fact.

Right; I've looked at aerial images of many of the biggest airports and it's very common to have two runways seemingly right next to each other (i.e., maybe only a taxiway or two between them, and presumably way too close to have 2 departures simultaneously). I figure this is to allow arrivals on one and departures on the other.

So, if my assumption is right and only 1 simultaneous arrival stream is possible on any close-together pair of runways, then I see only ORD as having 3 major areas of wide separation, thus allowing 4 mutually far-separated runways.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by denizen467

So, if my assumption is right and only 1 simultaneous arrival stream is possible on any close-together pair of runways, then I see only ORD as having 3 major areas of wide separation, thus allowing 4 mutually far-separated runways.

I think the approach pattern will start being a real problem when they finish the next south runway. The pilots now have to come in farther south and then cut over to line up with the new runway. They still have work to do on both the new north and south runways to allow ILS approaches from both directions wich I think is the plan. I am pretty sure one of the newer ATL runways is also like that.

[spyguy]

New TSA Checkpoint at T5 by flyt5, on Flickr

Untitled by flyt5, on Flickr

Journey to Italy at Terminal 5 at Local Favorite Tocco by flyt5, on Flickr

Kofe powered by Intelligentsia by flyt5, on Flickr

[N830MH]

Perfect! This is better way to do it. Those Business & First Class passengers will go to new checkpoint. They won't be at old checkpoint anymore. Too crowded!!

[F1 Tommy]

The Lufthansa 747 8I is coming in daily now. Also they have opened the new north and south runways up to arrivals coming in from the west for the first time this week. I have not seen it happen yet but they could run 4 arrivals from the west at a time now.

[F1 Tommy]

New DHL facility breaks ground at O'hare. It will be the largest global facility for DHL in the USA.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dhl-co...202500103.html

[denizen467]

^ Nice find. But where is this? This looks to be somewhere in or next to the north airfield area.

Some additional facts from the press release:

... includes 53,000 square feet of office space and 423,030 square feet of warehousing to accommodate working space for Global Forwarding’s more than 500 employees ...

... will also establish the facility as a Life Science Cold Chain Certified Competency Center for shipping of pharmaceutical, biotech and medical devices that need to be in a temperature controlled environment. The Competency Center will support the company’s THERMONET solution for temperature controlled heavy air freight transportation that provides enhanced monitoring and visibility of life science and healthcare products. It will also include two 10,000 square foot Good Distribution Practices (GDP) compliant cold chambers.

... will be funded and developed by Aeroterm on a 24 acre parcel of land Aeroterm controls on the airport. “With this exciting project, we are pleased to grow our relationship with DHL which already spans multiple airport locations. Additionally, this investment validates Aeroterm’s larger undertaking at O’Hare which approaches $400 million in investments” ...

... expected to be completed by November 2014, and up until this date, all services will continue to be rendered from DHL Global Forwarding’s current location in Franklin Park.

[denizen467]

Speaking of the south airfield, the skyline itself is changing there as the new control tower is now close to half of its final height.

[Kngkyle]

Interesting fact now that the AA & US merger is approved.

O'Hare is now the only airport that has a major hub from both the #1 and #2 largest airlines in the world. And Chicago is the only city in the world with 3 major airline hubs. (the NY hubs aren't of the same scale)

[nergie]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

Interesting fact now that the AA & US merger is approved.

O'Hare is now the only airport that has a major hub from both the #1 and #2 largest airlines in the world. And Chicago is the only city in the world with 3 major airline hubs. (the NY hubs aren't of the same scale)

Technically, the NY hubs are in different cities.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

O'Hare is now the only airport that has a major hub from both the #1 and #2 largest airlines in the world.

isn't LAX a hub for both american and united?

[Kngkyle]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

isn't LAX a hub for both american and united?

The key word being major hub. The AA and UA hub operations at LAX are minuscule compared to ORD. Both of them combined at LAX don't equal one of them at ORD.

[trvlr70]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

Interesting fact now that the AA & US merger is approved.

O'Hare is now the only airport that has a major hub from both the #1 and #2 largest airlines in the world. And Chicago is the only city in the world with 3 major airline hubs. (the NY hubs aren't of the same scale)

Impressive. But oddly, there are larger hubs in the US:
DL in ATL
UA in IAH
AA in DFW
AA in CLT

UA's ORD is the regional leader in size.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by trvlr70

Impressive. But oddly, there are larger hubs in the US:
DL in ATL
UA in IAH
AA in DFW
AA in CLT

UA's ORD is the regional leader in size.

The only one on that list that is larger than United's ORD hub is DL ATL.

AA/AE has around 450 outbound flights a day from ORD during the winter.

[N830MH]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

isn't LAX a hub for both american and united?

Yes, and Delta & Southwest as well.

[LaSalle.St.Station]

I have no doubt that United and American's resistance to the final capacity increases to operations and terminals at O'hare is in response to Southwest maxing out it's capacity at Midway. They aren't stupid enough to fund infrastructure that would allow a major competitor to jump in and absorb up market share.

The city should approach SWA about funding a small Western terminal and the last runway development at O'hare in order to keep them growing their total Chicago operations.

[trvlr70]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

The only one on that list that is larger than United's ORD hub is DL ATL.

AA/AE has around 450 outbound flights a day from ORD during the winter.

I was referencing passenger numbers, not aircraft movements. Typically, passengers, not planes themselves, are the determining factor for hub size. Chicago increasingly utilizes regional jets verses mainline so the loads are not there. Dallas' AA hub, Charlotte's AA hub, and even Houston's UA hub all move move passengers through their respective hubs than Chicago's UA hub.

[F1 Tommy]

Originally Posted by trvlr70

I was referencing passenger numbers, not aircraft movements. Typically, passengers, not planes themselves, are the determining factor for hub size. Chicago increasingly utilizes regional jets verses mainline so the loads are not there. Dallas' AA hub, Charlotte's AA hub, and even Houston's UA hub all move move passengers through their respective hubs than Chicago's UA hub.

That is very true, but the overall boardings are still substantially higher with the combined carriers at ORD for all the other cities you listed(other than ATL) even with all those "regional jets". Add in MDW and the Chicago number is even higher. We will se how the AA/US merger plays out. One of the hubs will shrink, and I can tell you it won't be Chicago AA/AE.

[trvlr70]

Originally Posted by F1 Tommy

That is very true, but the overall boardings are still substantially higher with the combined carriers at ORD for all the other cities you listed(other than ATL) even with all those "regional jets". Add in MDW and the Chicago number is even higher. We will se how the AA/US merger plays out. One of the hubs will shrink, and I can tell you it won't be Chicago AA/AE.

I hope you're right about AA's ORD hub. Because if you are, it would be contrary to the retrenchment that has been going on in the last several years. The hub has lost many of its international routes (for ex., Frankfort, Glasgow, Moscow, Delhi, Stockholm, Birmingham, Buenos Aries, Brussels, Amsterdam, Zurich), scaled down domestic capacity, and where regional jets were once only prevalent in concourse G, now they are also becoming ubiquitous in H & K. Is AA giving up on Chicago?