When you get into projects of this size even relatively large firms can't handle the whole thing alone. You'll might have one firm designing the airside taxiways/runways, one firm handling the exterior design of the terminal buildings including the utilities and security measures, and then another only doing the interior design and commercial space layout. Each of these is a massive, multi-million dollar project in and of themselves with highly specialized engineering requirements, so it's very common to subcontract/joint-bid certain sections out if your firm isn't one of the 2-3 in the world capable of doing something like this completely in-house (and even if you are, it's often cheaper to do that anyway).

..

O'Hare passenger traffic continues to set records -

- ORD handled 8,067,100 passengers in July, the most in history
- FY2018 should see over 83M passengers served, another new record after almost hitting 80M in 2017
- Average passengers per operation is the highest since at least 2005, indicating the airlines are utilizing larger aircraft and less RJs
- International traffic has now set new monthly records for the past 12 consecutive months
- If the rate of growth over the past 5 years continues, ORD will exceed the 100M passenger trigger to build Phase 2 of the O'Hare 21 plan well before Phase 1 is even complete
- ORD has more passengers in a week than MDW has in a month

Iberia Announces Two New A350 Routes To The Americas

"Iberia has announced two new routes to the Americas from Madrid for the summer of 2019. The company plans on operating flights to Chicago O’hare, and to Buenos Aires Ezeiza. The new routes are not going to be year round, but will only operate during the busy peak summer season. Ibera plans on operating the destinations with Airbus A350-900XWB aircraft.

The flights from Madrid to O’hare will start in late May and go through to the end of October 2019. Initially, Iberia will operate the service three times per week building up to a daily schedule later in the season."

https://simpleflying.com/iberia-anno...-the-americas/

wut?

Iberia already has daily, year round as I recall, MAD service to/from ORD.

Could it be just a different aircraft type here?

They do, it sounds like they're just switching to a newer, potentially bigger, aircraft. The A350 isn't a lot bigger, but the biggest A350 can carry more than the biggest A330.

I believe they use A330-300 aircraft now, although I've seen some flights with the A340. Depending on which A350 aircraft they use, they may have additional capacity. Regardless, the A350 should be more efficient, so if their fuel costs are lower, perhaps they can offer more price competition on the route.

Edit: looks like the A350-900, which has like 40% more range and at least 20 more passengers. There A330-300 is the size of a Boeing 787, the A350 is bigger, and Iberia just started taking delivery of them less than six months ago.

I guess I'm just being picky in that I wouldn't call swapping aircraft for some days on an existing route "New service to the Americas".

They move up to the A340 when they want more seats in the peak euro travel season IIRC. Though the A350 would certainly be a lot cheaper to operate per seat which is probably the reason for the swap given the dates they listed.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg...ed-ohare-hotel

City has a new deal for the existing hotel. Gets more money as it's now a management deal with a new operator and the facility will be upgraded. Aviation has back burnered the new T5 hotel for now.

CONRAC/Parking Lot F appears to have opened Wednesday. No people mover though since that's a ways behind schedule. They're bussing for now.

Last time I flew looked like they were pretty far along on the central deicing facility. I doubt they'll have it done by the end of the year as promised but probably close.

That will be delayed. Nice to see the Iberia A350's will be coming in. I remember when they used to bring in their 747's.

Not sure why, but little to no fanfare on the CONRAC opening last week:

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...tly-opens.html

No, there's no fanfare at the new CONRAC.

As for people mover, they have wait for early Spring 2019 or late Spring 2019 during at that time. They will extended from terminals to CONRAC. Right now, they doing busing from entire terminals.

Full article - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...106-story.html

Several good ones, but I cannot stand Fentress Architects. I hate the Denver airport and the Apple store is boring as hell to me. Santiago Calatrava would be great but the roof will leak and it will be way over budget:D Maybe Gang would be best for part of it.

Hell effing yes I want a Studio Gang terminal.

I'd be fine if she did the new global terminal and Foster ended up with the new concourses.

Not Calatrava. No. Just no.

Are there any drawings of these five finalists available for the public to see yet?

Not yet, but it sounds like models (and possibly drawings) will be released once the designs have been finalized, most likely in the next few months - it's exciting either way

Right! Please be patients. They will take a time during designs phase.

Is it just me or does O'Hare have an extreme lack of outside of security places to eat? My sister had a long layover at O'Hare the other month and I went to meet with her. The only places we could find to eat were Starbucks and some shitty food stand in the O'Hare Bus Terminal...