CHICAGO: ORD & MDW discussion

[twister244]

A few nuggets.....

According to @tpapord on IG - They have completed work on taxi reconfigs in prep for the sat construction. So... In theory, we just need to get the temporary gates in place for a groundbreaking. I haven't been to C lately, so I have no idea if work on the temporary gates has commenced or not. That appears to be the only thing separating us from official satellite construction. If I am wrong, please correct me.

I realized the construction on L I saw last month was the Stinger addition (per the 21 rendering) of three (?) gates.

On the airline front.... It appears Avianca may be coming back to O'hare?
https://aeroxplorer.com/articles/avianca...bia-expansion-plans-to-us-and-canada.php

Avianca would resume flights to two key destinations in the United States, Chicago (ORD) and Newark (EWR), under the proposal.

This article also lists the following cities on the application:
- Barranquilla
- Bogota
- Cali
- Cartagena
- Medellin

Who knows if this goes through, but it's a start to get more S. America flights in.

While BA is going to extend their A380 flights until next Winter, they may be working to phase the A380 out at O'Hare and replace it with the 777.

https://simpleflying.com/british-airways-airbus-a380-winter-changes-ohare-dulles/

While subject to change, Chicago is not scheduled to see the A380 next summer: the 777-300ER is scheduled on BA295/BA294.

Again, this is always subject to change given trends, etc.

Finally, I dig some avgeek digging the other night and noticed an interesting trend. Frontier Airlines has really scaled back their presence at O'Hare. If you lookup their flights out of O'hare, they only run four flights a day now:
https://www.airport-ohare.com/departures-airline-frontier-airlines

What's more interesting is Frontier is now operating a larger number out of MDW of around 11 flights:
https://www.midway-airport.com/mdw-departures-airline-frontier-airlines
So, up until a few minutes ago, MDW was bursting at the seems with SW running out of space, but suddenly MDW has the room there to add 11 flights? Not sure what to make of it, but I find it to be an interesting observation.