O'Hare needs more gates, not more runways
 

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/7...t-more-runways

O'Hare needs more gates, not more new runways.

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I flew into O'Hare from Frankfurt yesterday and arrived during the peak time of European arrivals. Clearing customs only took 15 minutes despite a mass crowd of people. I was expecting the worst and was happily surprised. Those electronic kiosks really sped up the process.

Interesting Article in the Chi-Tri about new Aviation Boss
 

The new aviation boss has great aspirations re. ORD Expansion, high speed rail etc. Good luck to her.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...ry.html#page=1

chicago should really be the start of hsr in the us. rail hubs/row into the downtown core, and flat as fuck mostly farm land in every direction except the water.

It seems me by the talk and leaks lately that we very well could be having an audible in terms of the OMP. More revamping and/ir extension of terminals and more gates. Which os frankly a lot more exciting then new runways.

It will be interesting to see what any nee configurations will be of new gates. A new T4? T6? Western terminal (doubt it). Also somewhere in there I think an update of T3 and T2 especially will be in the cards.

The Western Terminal was part of the deal cut with western suburbs to drop their opposition to runway expansion. Plus, the Tollway is already building all the needed access roads to it, and construction staging is much easier. There's no connection to the east terminal, but you could run a surface shuttle bus (secureside) from T2. If I were Emanuel, I'd prioritize a small Western Terminal over any of the other expansion plans, as it doesn't put additional strain on any of the existing infrastructure.

Looks like the A380 cometh...

Wonder who committed to A380 service it since the aviation department always said that they wouldn't build unless they had an agreement for use.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2...alling-behind/

Well it's a possibility and she seems to be playing it pretty close to the vest for now. Though if I was a betting man I'd say that we'll see a limited implementation of the World Gateway scheme with expansions off of T3/L concourse and stretch out the eastern leg of T5 to get a few more gates.

What happened? Did they abandon the Western terminal? :???: I just don't get it. What's exactly gonna do for O'Hare terminal? Can they adding more new gates and build a new entire terminal 4 & 6?

ORD is currently the fastest growing (big) airport in the world with 9.8% in passenger growth through May. The fastest growing (big) airport last year was Seoul Incheon at 9.6%. May itself saw an 10% increase over the previous year. This has been fueled primarily by domestic growth, which is up 11.08% YTD with international up 1.55% YTD.

http://www.flychicago.com/SiteCollec...%20SUMMARY.pdf

Good to see. With more wide body and mainline/large commuter gates ORD could start to take on ATL in passenger traffic as it would allow bigger airplanes to fit on the domestic and international terminals if built along with possibly more flights. You have to remember ORD has a lot of small gates that can only handle small commuter aircraft. It helps drive up the landing numbers but does not help drive up passenger traffic. Also ORD has a ton of Cargo flights wich also drives up landing stats, much higher than ATL. ORD domestic terminal is packed now during peak hours from 0630-2130 and T5 international from 1200 on.


You can't modify the old domestic terminal for bigger aircraft without loosing gates. That's why they need a new terminal if they want to grow in passenger traffic much more.

Wow, that is great news! Worldbusinesschicago publishes numbers and it seemed to me that the growth was huge at ORD. Now I know it is huge.

I didn't mention the increases in cargo traffic, which has also seen a huge jump. YTD tonnage is up 22.5%, domestic operations up 8% and international operations up 36%.

Total flight operations (take off and landings) are up 1.7% for the year. If you recall, ORD retook the title of World's Busiest Airport in this metric in 2014. The lead over Atlanta is widening for 2015.

,,,

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to helicopter everyone to O'Hare?

Better yet, rebuild Meigs Field and then fly everyone to O'hare.

They won't! Because of this, Meigs Field is too small, but there's is no way to build a new runway expansion. Besides, I think MDW needs to build a new longest runway. MDW has a short runway.

There is no "lead" over Atlanta, only Chicago media reports on the metric of most take-offs and landings.

Yes cargo has increased, but on the passenger side things are pathetic. The true measure of an airport (or any port or station) is passenger count. Which shipping port is busier and more significant, one that receives 100 canoes, kayaks, and rowboats per day, or one that receives 50 giant ocean liners and container ships?

O'Hare is the first one, getting "canoes" all day long because American and United are cheap and like to use 30 seat joke planes to cities that should have larger planes.

The numbers aren't even close--Atlanta is on track to having almost 100 MILLION passengers this year, while O'Hare remains stuck at 70 million pax and now 7th or 8th busiest in the world. I've flown to Atlanta, London, Dubai, and Los Angeles (all airports busier than O'Hare), and those are massive facilities--and you can clearly tell they are more significant than O'Hare. Larger planes, more passengers, better terminals, giant hubs. O'Hare used to be that until American and United sold us out with their downsizing of aircraft. The skyscraper forum equivalent for aviation, airliners.net, agrees with me, O'Hare is simply not one of the big boys anymore.

I don't even think gates are the issue at O'Hare (though 30-40 more would be a huge help). If American and United used normal sized 737 planes instead of those gnats meant to be private jets, passenger count would rise exponentially simply on account of those planes being at least twice as large. Case in point - Midway airport. It cranks out 21 million passengers a year through 42 gates (thanks to Southwest using normal planes), yielding 500,000 passengers per gate. O'Hare does a pathetic 376,000 passengers per gate (70 million/186 gates), even with the jumbo international gates factored in. If O'Hare had the same efficiency of gates as Midway, it would yield 93 million passengers per year, pretty much the SAME as Atlanta. Chicago is definitely getting its money's worth at Midway thanks to Southwest.

So there you have it, Atlanta is busier because Delta, which uses Atlanta as its home hub, has enough self respect to fly real aircraft out of there.

Priority for the city should be more gates, both international and domestic, and incentivizing United and American to stop using those gnats they call regional jets. I say impose flat landing fees - the same no matter what size or how heavy the aircraft is (current setup charges per aircraft weight).

While certainly important, I disagree. Time and again when you hear about reasons for businesses to relocate (or remain) in the city, or why an event is held in Chicago, and the answer given is the number of destinations that can be reached from Ohare, not the number of people transferring planes there.