T5 lounges and the 2nd A380 gate
 

When the T5 renovation kicked off, one area of need cited was the lack of space for airline lounges. Delta’s new lounge seems like a nice addition, but I’m surprised there has been no other mention of any other new lounges.
- Are any new ones planned (Emirates, Qatar, or Etihad)?
- Will the Delta lounge also act as a SkyTeam lounge, and will the Air France lounge now close?
- Will Swiss or SAS expand theirs? The Swiss lounge is a shoebox. I know they’ll eventually move to T2, but that’ll be in 5+ years.
- There was a plan to add a 2nd A380 gate with the T5 expansion, did this happen? Would that coincide with Emirates ever bringing the A380 here? With their partnership with United I’d think they’d have more demand at ORD now.

FYI your photos are not loading for me.

Though I believe I went through here a couple weeks ago. The 'agents telling people go to the left' every 50 feet gave it away. Yes, it was a ridiculously long walk. I was questioning if this was part of the new expansion or if this was going to be improved with the new expansion. I concluded this has to be a part that will be improved/replaced in the overall plan because it felt so ridiculously inconvenient and inefficient. Not sure what the future for this is.

https://i.imgur.com/wvA2xGR.jpg

I flew in from Frankfurt on Sunday and don't remember a long walk, though I was pretty out of it. (Most of what I remember is a surprisingly short passport control line that only took 2 minutes, but then having to wait a long time for my bag...).

No new lounges are currently planned as far as I know, but part of the description of the expansion project did mention more space for things including lounges so maybe.
The lounge is branded as a Delta Sky Club just like in other airports. That being said, I believe that Skyteam members with certain status can access the Sky Clubs.
Haven't herd anything about expansions to existing lounges (other than the new Sky Club that opened), but I would imagine that some lounges could expand with the extra space. Don't know about Swiss or SAS specifically.
Looking at the expansion on a satellite map, they have indeed added a space big enough to park a second A380 at Terminal 5 (I think it's Gates M29/M30). My assumption based on the numbering on the map is that M29 and M30 can either serve two narrowbodies or be used together for an A380 (one for lower deck boarding and the other for upper deck boarding).

As far as Emirates goes, Chicago was specifically mentioned as a key city for the partnership and given that United has one of their biggest hubs here, the possibilities for connections are definitely abundant. I did hear that Emirates recently announced that they were bringing back the A380 to Houston (which was another key city specifically mentioned for the partnership) and given that Emirates does carry more passengers out of ORD than IAH, I'd imagine that they are considering bringing the A380 to ORD but are waiting to see how the second A380 gate is coming along since British Airways has been using the other A380 gate. This is all speculation though so I could be wrong.

ah yeah especially with Global Entry this tends to happen, especially on Sundays. In fact the bags sometimes are out in the carrousel even before the board updates with the carrousel number. When I asked about why they said on weekends they don't have enough staff for updating the boards consistently :shrug:

So I’m at T5 right now waiting in security… and what a shit show. This is the second time this year where the security lines are severely choked and atrociously slow. If T5 is going to keep moving flights into this terminal, they need to address this ASAP as the problem is only going to get worse. It’s embarrassing.

So a T5 issue? I have flown quite a bit this year (not T5) and security has been the fastest I can remember.

TSA Precheck?

Absolutely a T5 issue. They have too many passengers and not enough security. FWIW, the checkpoint looked temporary in nature, so I’m assuming they are building out new checkpoints somewhere that can accompany the increase in volume. The new addition looks super nice, but no amenities yet. You can tell there will be probably new stuff opening over the coming months. I am sitting on BAs A380, which flew out of M17. While this isn’t part of the addition, it’s part of the new buildout on the front part of the original terminal, so the gates were new. Also, noticed Southwest is flying out of the new addition, so they probably moved down there to make way for Delta on the other end of the terminal.

This checkpoint didn’t have precheck… Maybe the other one down by the Delta wing has it, but this one didn’t.

Point is…. If you fly out of T5, give yourself a ton of time to be safe. I was in security for 45 minutes.

Seconded. Took a stroll through the expansion recently.....very nice and cool to be able to walk through while essentially empty, as there were just a couple other passengers doing the same thing, a couple airport employees, but other than that felt like I had the entire wing to myself.

Yes, give yourself more extra time. If you are PreCheck. You have ask agents. They will help you. They know where PreCheck is.

The lounge situation is super disappointing. It’s also not like things just happen overnight. So, if we don’t even have a plan right now, then it’s not looking too good. I suspect that OW and Star Alliance partners don’t want to make an investment when they may eventually move to a new global terminal and share a bigger alliance-wide lounge there. I’ll be dead before that happens. And the Swissport lounge is not associated with the Swiss Airlines lounge (which closed a couple years ago). The planning is really bad here.

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/dept...edAirport.html

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/dept.../10282022.html

I see no reason why O'hare can't coast ahead of major airports over the coming years.....

At this point, the only thing holding it back is more gates, which is going to be fixed over the next few years. We should consider ourselves really lucky the planners at O'Hare redid the runways to have six parallel segments. It's going to pay dividends in the future. I flew out of Heathrow on Tuesday to Milan, and I couldn't believe they only have TWO parallel runways there. That's it..... One runway for landings - One for takeoffs.

For an airport with that kind of gravity, it shocked me. Now I know why people hate flying through Heathrow. O'hare is positioned to continue to add flights, and expand hubs without worrying about sacrificing the customer experience.

I hope so, and it should except for one thing. ORD costs alot more than ATL/DFW/CLT/DEN to operate out of. That is what is holding them back. ATL is far ahead in passenger traffic. Forget the connectivity pax traffic headlines. ORD is a far far second to ATL and has been for years. Landings are a different matter.

Cost per enplanement is definitely a meaningful metric and you are correct that O'Hare is far more costly than ATL/DFW/CLT/DEN but it's still considerably cheaper than BOS, JFK, EWR, LAX, and SFO. So kind of a mixed bag there.

Chicago (and most American airports) need to invest more in retail and dining options as a source of revenue instead of relying so heavily on passenger and parking fees. The problem is all the existing O'Hare terminals pre-date this trend and don't have room for more shops and restaurants. Hopefully the new terminals are built with more emphasis on this. The T5 expansion seems to have done so. Asian airports have taken this to the extreme and they're basically 90% shopping mall 10% airport... I am not advocating for that but rather somewhere in the middle.. like most European airports.

I recently learned that O'Hare has more runways than any other airport in the world, at 8.

https://simpleflying.com/major-airport-most-runways/

So now that Terminal 5 extension is completed, what are the next steps? I recall the plan is to build Satellite 1 and Satellite 2 concourses of the new terminal, before actually closing and demolishing Terminal 2 to give way to the new global terminal.

How about the new indoor parking of Terminal 5?

Is there a timeframe for this?