CHICAGO: ORD & MDW discussion

[kbud]

Originally Posted by ih8spires

Don't forget, cargo flights are aircraft movements that do not add to passenger totals. That is why I think movements are the most important number.

I am curious how you think aircraft movements is more important to driving economic growth in a city? I would like to understand. Everything I have read over the last ten years has talked about how the number of people drives much more economic impact to a city than aircraft movement with how the passengers spend money and how they bring intellectual property to local companies that helps them grow to lead to job stimulation. It is a tricky data point as some passengers are only in transit.

Passenger data does show that since 1994, ORD (+11%) has not grown compared to the rivals of LAX (+47%), DFW (+55%), ATL (+93%), DEN (+135%), and IAH (+105%).

[ih8spires]

Well, during the first part of my career, I used to take a taxiway on the left side of the runway after landing. Now I take a right. There is a lot going on (economically) on the north and south sides of O'Hare.

[kbud]

Originally Posted by ih8spires

Well, during the first part of my career, I used to take a taxiway on the left side of the runway after landing. Now I take a right. There is a lot going on (economically) on the north and south sides of O'Hare.

I am talking about economic growth for all of Chicagoland not only the airport.

[Kngkyle]

Gates are most definitely not a limiting factor to passenger growth, not right now at least. Sure, United can't have 600 flights all depart at 9AM but they there is gate availability throughout the day for them to add multiple additional departure banks. Suggesting that ORD would have millions more passengers if only there were more gates is just not accurate.

That being said the city should absolutely be planning for a future where more gates are needed and insist on a committed timeline for S-2, even if the ordering is changed up a bit.

[kbud]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

Gates are most definitely not a limiting factor to passenger growth, not right now at least. Sure, United can't have 600 flights all depart at 9AM but they there is gate availability throughout the day for them to add multiple additional departure banks. Suggesting that ORD would have millions more passengers if only there were more gates is just not accurate.

That being said the city should absolutely be planning for a future where more gates are needed and insist on a committed timeline for S-2, even if the ordering is changed up a bit.

There are two main ways for ORD to grow now without more gates.
1) American could certainly add a bank and possibly even United.
2) The airlines could replace smaller regional jets with mainline.

But ORD does lack wide body gates which limit's int'l growth to ORD and potentially some domestic growth if they would deploy more wide bodies on trunk domestic routes. United has talked publicly that ORD lacks wide body gates at T1, and between 2 and 8pm at T5. Sadly only a 767 can fit between the B and C concourses. This limitation is exactly how ORD doesn't plan for the future.

American did cite this a few years back for T3 as well, but we know this is not a constraint now with having both Aer Lingus and British Airways move to T3. The customs and inspection facilities are also a limiting factor for international growth as everything is in T5.

One of my points is that the city needs O'Hare to grow its passenger numbers as that directly leads to growth in the city. 11% growth at ORD since 1994 is actually a decline in the market. Since 1994 passenger enplanements in the entire US have increased by 75%.

O'hare actually did a really good job in constructing the new runway configuration, but the terminal size and infrastructure are in poor shape. Hopefully the new T2 can get started asap with as minimal cuts as possible.