FAA Just Froze The O’Hare Arms Race — And United Is The Biggest Loser

United and American are locked in a battle in Chicago. American had been late to rebuild its schedules at O’Hare after Covid. They had retired too many planes, and didn’t have the aircraft if they wanted to focus on Dallas and Chicago. So they waited and it cost them – Chicago moved to re-allocate gates earlier than they’d promised, taking away gates from American and giving them to United.

This woke up American, which started aggressively adding service. United decided they didn’t want to just keep American from regaining its footprint – they wanted to add even more gates for themselves going forward. They added flights even more aggressively. Since they’re in a stronger financial position, they thought they could bleed American into de-hubbing Chicago, or at least shrinking.

However, the FAA came out and declared that the growth at O’Hare just isn’t possible – too many flights for the airspace. The agency, which doesn’t just regulate air traffic but is the service provider as well (a conflict, which has led to zero accountability in modernizing the system for decades), said the airport just couldn’t handle it and they needed to step in to limit growth. In truth, the whole system needs a rethink but at a minimum the regulatory and service functions need to be split.

There’s now progress on exactly what government-imposed limits at the airport will look like. On Monday they issued a notice “Operating Limitations at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Notice of Meeting and Request for Information.” (FR Doc. 2026-05325).

• It reconvenes the reduction meeting for March 19, 2026
  
• Invites written submissions through March 26
  
• Says the final carrier-specific order will be published afterward
  
• But most importantly it lays out the proposed flight cap framework.

For summer 2026 (from March 29 – October 24) the FAA compares scheduled 3,038 daily operations operations at the airport to a proposed 2,608 with caps in each half hour. This new proposed level ties to summer 2025, but is odd.

• They initially proposed 2,800 flights per day on February 27
  
• Then floated 2,500 on March 5.
  
• Chicago itself objected to anything below 2,800 on March 12
  
• And now they’re at last year’s levels – zero growth.

The FAA’s statement is that they want summer 2025 schedules proportionately sharing reductions to avoid picking “winners or losers.” But the notion that the airport cannot handle any growth is odd, and underscores FAA failures more than anything else.

The notice does not specify individual airline limits. That comes after the March 19 meeting and March 26 comment window. But they’re proposing significant reductions at peak times.

• 7 a.m. from 133 to 84 scheduled operations
  
• 12:30 p.m. from 112 to 84 scheduled operations
  
• 1:00 p.m. from 112 to 84 scheduled operations
  
• 4:30 p.m. from 122 to 84 scheduled operations
  
• 6:30 p.m. from 108 to 84 schedled operations
  
• 8:00 p.m. from 131 to 84 scheduled operations
  
• 10:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. capped at 50, 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. capped at 30

In much of the reporting people are mixing up two different 2025 baselines at O’Hare. The FAA used 2,680 as a Summer 2025 peak-day reference, but Appendix 1 of the Notice compares their proposal to June 24, 2025 with 2,554 flights. That is why some people describe 2,608 (vs. 2,680) others call it a 2% increase (vs. 2,554). Excluding flights after 10 p.m. the rest of the day is net negative to 2025 under this proposal.

This proposal leaves United as the relative loser. They planned about 750 O’Hare flights a day versus 541 last year. American’s expansion was much smaller, from 484 daily departures last summer to 526 this summer. A much larger share of the erased schedules will come from United. American loses some growth, but it benefits from the FAA freezing the O’Hare arms race near 2025 levels. The FAA says it wants proportional reductions off 2025 levels expressly to prevent one airline from winning or losing.

This is a Summer 2026 congestion order, not a permanent slot regime. But I have to wonder if the FAA believes that O’Hare cannot grow flights, what is Chicago doing spending billions to add gates? These specific flight levels – much of the day below 2025 levels, and certainly below the FAA’s own initial proposal – seem arbitrary.