There's actually a more in-depth article today that dives deeper into Kirby's comments -
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/ccb-united-airlines-scott-kirby-ohare-20260827/
The TLDR is that Kirby actually wanted to add new international routes, but couldn't because of the constraints ORD currently has. He is suggesting that the biggest bottleneck is actually the airspace and FAA, not gate numbers. Whether or not that's true is up for debate...... He mentions that one of the contributing factors here is because we have two hubs, you have twice the number of "catchment flights" that feed smaller cities to ORD for larger flights. Whereas if we were a single hub, you could make the number of flights more efficient. Again - I'm not an expert on this, so this could be Kirby propping up an argument for UA's benefit.
He's also calling AA's bluff by suggesting AA can't keep this strategy of matching UA's route announcements simply because they are losing too much money at ORD. Again - I'm not sure about the validity of the claim - Here is the quote:
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“Look, economic gravity is going to eventually win,” he said. “I’m not complaining. I really am not. I’m not trying to change it today. But in the 12 months leading into Q1, American lost $1.1 billion in Chicago. And by the way, that number is going to be bigger for the full year because that’s before their growth push started and before oil prices went up.
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