Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links below. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is a hub for both American Airlines and United Airlines. United has been consistently growing at the airport and will offer the most seats it has flown in 20 years while American has retreated a bit.
Crain’s reports that United called for six more gates under a new “fly it or lose it” provision in the lease between the airlines and the city. This looks like it will be granted and United will maintain its status as the airport’s largest carrier. With this addition, American Airlines is set to shed four of its gates. American has been trying to catch-up and will increase the number of flights to/from Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) by more than 20% this summer (equal pre-pandemic levels, but behind United).
When the gates are shuffled (if this plan is fully approved), United will hold about 40% of the space and American will have around 30%. The remaining 28% is divided by the approximately 42 other airlines that serve the airport. Delta Air Lines is the airport’s third-largest airline and will potentially see a reduction of three gates.
Southwest Airlines will continue to have three gates as it does today, but they will be assigned versus the current shared arrangement. Alaska Airlines and Air Canada each will drop from two gates to one and JetBlue will reduce from three gates to one (again, if the plan is fully approved).
All airlines have until April 30th to accept or reject the gate assignments from the Department of Aviation. American has already issued a statement decrying the change. It reads:
We’re rejecting the Chicago Department of Aviation’s improper trigger of the reallocation of gates at O’Hare. It’s not only a violation of the agreement signed in 2018, but it stifles the competitive essence of the dual-hub by inhibiting our continued growth.”
The city released the following counter statement:
The CDA will continue to cooperate with its airline partners to consider all feedback received over the next two months regarding the location of those gates, and publish the final gate map no later than June 1st, with all gate changes to take effect no later than October 1st.”
The new agreement will allocate gates based on the amount of flying each airline did in the previous year. That provision didn’t take effect until a year after a 10-gate expansion at Terminal 5, which is home to most international flights, Delta, and Southwest. American further contends that the contract also requires the city to wait until a year after a small expansion at Terminal 3 is completed. This terminal is used by American and its airline partner. American says the last of the three new gates on the L concourse at T3 weren’t completed until March 14th and that more time is needed to fully comply with the terms of the agreement.
Anthony’s Take: It’s interesting to see the gate battle at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) have United growing and American shrinking. I’m most upset to see Delta lose gates as I keep hoping for more flights out of one of my home airports and not less.
(Featured Image Credit: Karson via Unsplash.)
Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
User Generated Content Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
2 comments
AA should not be relinquishing Gates at ORD if they plan on using them since they have a Hub at ORD. If the City wants to keep two Large Carriers operating Hubs they better come up with a fair plan and not favor one over the other unless they want less Service. UAL may call Chicago Home but it is certainly not its Biggest Hub and rumor has it UAL may be shopping around to move its HDQ to the Location that rolls over and offers them Everything so there is no reason to bend over and bow to UAL. Chicago needs competition.
American wasn’t interested in adding service until it was apparent that they’d be on the losing end of this arrangement. My hunch is, if they keep gates, they’ll only squander the service down the road. Lord knows, they made a complete mess of their long haul offerings over the past 15 years.