No bet, I don't want kids.;)

Lets agree to disagree here. I think partner airlines will get space in T2 but AA/UA will only use it for international arrivals and tug their planes over as they do elsewhere. Time will tell.

On another front Delta moving to T5 is good news so that Skyteam can be better leveraged against Oneworld/Star Alliance. Hopefully Delta will meaningfully expand their domestic connections as well.

there's nothing worse than landing late there and learning they gave your gate away and you have to sit on the tarmac

The expanded T1 footprint confirms any new terminal facility at O'Hare must be 100% in Cook County. (Approx 20% of O'hare is in DuPage County)

This unspoken requirement has been in place since the days of Orchard Field and was part of The OMP. The discussion of a Western Terminal at ORD is nothing but necessary cover for the politicians.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/apps/...20170929075513

Much of the grand vision held by Mayors Daley and Stevenson (Rosemont) of an AirportCity has largely been realized. Built out, O'Hare would be a mega-destination of its own. Hotels, convention facilities, shopping centers and Sports arenas were built. but not the casinos -yet. Newly extended Balmoral Rd provides 'local' access.

A new International Terminal on the site of T2 will transform the airport entirely while maintaining the existing horseshoe. At the same time the heating plant will find itself relocated to the new terminal or to a site near the entrance to the main garage.

I-190 will straightened. Beginning at River Road, the new road will bisect the airport and connect to Elgin-O'hare. Eventually everything eastward to the Tri-State will be demolished creating a building site nearly as large as the existing terminal complex.

So..AA will kept the entire concourse G/H/K/L gate and there is no need to be build a new gates.

As for T1, they will extended the entire concourse C. UA will gets more new gates and I think it's right choice. They can be allowed to expanded more new domestic & international routes.

And also T2, the entire concourse F will be demolished and they will renovation new CBP facility for Star Alliance & Oneworld partners, as well. I think it is the best way to do it.

I don't know--but I have to wonder--O'hare's terminals haven't been upgraded while a lot of peer airport's have. Now that O'hare's expansion push is happening, it coincides with a time of record profits for the airlines. It's possible that this could make it really easy to get a deal done, and it might be a better project that what would have been possible 10 years ago. I'm excited to learn more.

AA and UA both get more gates. UA with the expansion of T1. AA with DL/B6/VA/etc. moving to T5 from T3.

T1 will be exclusively United. T3 will be exclusively American. T2 will be split between the two (and their partners).

T5 will be SkyTeam, non-affiliated, and LCCs.

without be anything close to an expert on these matters, that plan seems to make a crapload of sense, at least on the surface of it.

united and american each get a massive terminal exclusively for their own domestic use, and then a new big terminal directly in between the two for themselves and their international friends to share (much easier international/domestic connections for star alliance and oneworld).

and then all of the small-time ORD players get shipped out to T5.

it makes sense to me.

What happen at T4, assuming it ever existed?

T4 was the designation for a temporary international terminal that existed on the 1st floor of ORD's parking garage while the old international terminal was demolished for united's new T1 and a new international terminal (T5) that was built elsewhere on the grounds back in the '80s/'90s .

when the new international terminal opened in 1993, T4 was closed and the brand new international terminal was given the "T5" designation to avoid confusion with the old one and the designation "T4" has not been subsequently reused, so there currently is no T4 at ORD, only T1, T2, T3 & T5.

An interesting aspect to this is that in order to build T2 they have to demolish nearly 45 RJ gates at the existing T2, but at the same time they are saying this will increase the gate count by 30. The new T2 will have room for maybe 15-20 widebody gates, so that is a net loss of up to 30 gates. That means 60 new gates need to be built elsewhere, which is equivalent to the entire main concourse of the McNamara Terminal at DTW (which is huge).

Also I suspect that the majority of those 60 gates will be built to handle 737s and A320s, not 50 seater RJs like the current T2. So while 30 gates is a significant addition in and of itself, the actual increase in passenger capacity could be a magnitude greater.

They also mentioned today that the existing T1 needs a new roof. I fully expect that to lead to an entire phased retrofit of the whole existing terminal once the add-on is completed.

This plan makes enormous sense. It's no wonder AA/UA designed it themselves. Their projected timeline is certainly ambitious... but they are sure putting together the L stinger gates in short order.

Agreed that this seems to make the most practical logistical and financial sense for expansion.

One thing if anyone can explain it to me is what are the two shorter blue east/west lines below the United Terminals supposed to represent in the newest diagram?

....Also I hope and do expect that sometime in the next 10-15 years there will be all but a full scale rebuild of the 2/3 terminals. I would think that American would eventually want a decent looking modern terminal to serve as their 2nd biggest hub to rival United's which has held up much better than AA T3 even if T1 is younger.

Right, they will freeing it up the gate space at entire concourse L gates. All ULCC/LCC will relocate to T5. They can have more gates at T5.

So AA will acquired more gates at entire concourse L. They can have more specific new routes.

Taixiway realignment.

I'd expect AA to further renovate T3, and certainly the L concourse if/when they take it over, but I doubt they'll replace it in the next couple decades.

I can only hope the schematic is not anything close to what they are thinking. The biggest issue with old, outdated airports is concourse width. The schematic shows the new concourses to be the same narrow width as the current ones, where there is no room for people to even line up, let alone experience amenities in comparison to airports elsewhere.

And once again the western half of the airport has enough vacant land to fit Denver's entire terminal, yet we get a net addition of 30 or so gates when 75 can get in there easily. The obsession with keeping that one diagonal runway open that seems to intersect the terminal complex is what is killing the potential here.

Anyhow, if they want to call terminal 2 the new global terminal they need to make it just that, actual global, world class, unlike the narrow corridors of terminal 5.

Crossing fingers that this takes Ohare AHEAD of other airports and ahead of its time for the next 30 years, rather than just catching up to 2017 standards (and therefore outdated as soon as construction finishes).

Having traveled to multiple outstanding global hubs, O'Hare has no excuse to match and exceed the passenger experience when there is so much land to ensure large, wide main terminals and boarding areas.

Interesting. Why is it that gates need to be in cook county yet runways go into dupage? I hope mere county politics isn't what's preventing us from having a hub that can serve 100 million passengers! That is super frustrating.

Look at all that vacant land to the west, terminals 1-3 can literally be replicated if they wanted to:

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEA...ZWEzZjQ2Ng.jpg

Based on the note for "West Parking/Screening Facility", it seems like the plan is to build a garage and security checkpoints on the west side of the airport, with an underground APM linking it to the new satellite concourses and the new T2. Since the APM is behind security, it can be used to facilitate gates on the western end eventually. Remember, what DuPage and the western suburbs want is access, not gates necessarily.

Not sure how baggage is handled in this scenario, and anybody flying Delta or an LCC will have a long, arduous two-train journey to their gate in T5.

Maybe shuttle busses from the western screening facility to T5, it's not optimal but at least you wouldn't have to exit the airside.

I highly doubt the dimensions from that outline are anything close to accurate or final. The layout, on the other hand, is likely very near final seeing as it's been agreed upon by AA, UA, the city, and has been submit to the FAA.

The reason you have 30 new gates instead of 75 is because UA and AA have veto power and would block it. The city likely had to lean on them hard to get them to agree to 30. If the city has a spare billion and wants to build a 75 gate terminal they can without AA/UA approval. But since the city itself will not be footing the bill, and is dependent on UA and AA to pay for all of this, they have to negotiate an agreement with them. UA and AA have no incentive to pay for a 75 gate terminal for their competitors.

Of course they shouldn't build anything for their competitors--AA and UA built O'hare and gave Chicago the global connections it has. I hated Mayor Daley's obsession with competition (i.e. Spirit and other greyhound airlines) coming into O'Hare when it's already a competitive place with 2 hubs. Giant hub operations are the reason O'Hare is the most connected and the biggest draw for international airlines. And where did you get that the city builds the terminals? Taxpayer money is never used, it's always the airline ticket taxes and fees.

That said, why couldn't the city push AA and United for a full build out that maintains their dominance of the airport? UA would keep its 45% market share (whatever it is) and AA would keep its 40% and everyone else gets the other 15% as it is now--just more gates.

ORD is the only top ten busy airport with enough land to nearly double its gates and it just doesn't happen for artificial reasons. What used to be the busiest in the world could have still been the busiest, but instead we're left with these piecemeal expansions that occur once every 20 years. There's no reason not to shoot for Atlanta, Dubai, and Beijing. Heck even LAX passed O'hare in passengers. What was once the busiest airport in the world 30 years straight is now number 6 or 7 because it refuses to build to its real capacity.

Last year's passenger numbers were 78 million, and at 185 gates, that's an average of 422k passengers per gate. Maintaining those averages, a 250 gate O'Hare equals 105 million, barely enough to reach Atlanta's incredible 104 million (wow, give credit where due).

A 250 gate O'Hare means more connecting passengers to feed international routes that AA and UA (and their partners) can't fill right now. That means a nonstop flight to Africa (something Atlanta has) or more service to South America, or some of the long-haul flights that New York JFK currently enjoys.

Once this expansion is complete in 2027 (earliest possible timeline), O'Hare is still the 6th busiest airport or has fallen to 10th, and the terminal facility likely isn't winning any international awards.

Not trying to be a downer, I'm an aviation geek and have been to probably the top 30 airports--O'Hare can and should be number 1 again, both in passenger numbers and amenities/quality.

For a city whose unofficial motto is "make no little plans," these are little plans.

I was only stating that if the city wanted to build what you propose then they would have no choice but to use tax payer money because UA and AA would veto the increase in fees.

I'm sure the city did push AA and UA. But you aren't going to need 250 let alone 180 gates if the passenger fees required to pay for a complete redevelopment are $150 per head. How can ORD compete with fees so high? Answer: it can't. The city has to balance the need for modernization with the need to be price competitive.

Again, building a brand new 250 gate complex is going to require enormous passenger fees that would make the airport noncompetitive. It would probably reduce passenger traffic not increase.

It's #1 for domestic and international connectivity in the Western Hemisphere which is far more important to the people and businesses in the city than the total number of passengers.

O'Hare already has some of the highest passenger fees among major US airports thanks to the $5b+ that has been spent on the runway realignment. They simply can't spend another $5+ billion to rebuild all the terminals and remain competitive. If the runway re-alignment were not necessary then perhaps they could do what you propose with the terminal complex. The proposed plan could easily handle 100 million passengers.

Heck, even the current terminals can probably handle it without *that* much of a problem. It would just require the airlines to fly bigger planes. Apart from the international terminal during a few peak hours, the current complex is not really near capacity. Just walk around the terminal and look at the gates and see what time the next flight is leaving. Often you'll see there are 3-4 hour windows where they could easily add another flight or two if they wanted. UA is flying around 5-6 flights per gate per day. Southwest is able to squeeze in 10 flights per gate per day at some of their stations.