FAA Caps Chicago O’Hare Summer Flights — And Hands American A Win Over United

The Department of Transportation has announced its cap on summer flights at Chicago O’Hare. Here’s the FAA order.

• The FAA order caps Chicago O’Hare at 2,708 daily flight operations from May 17 to October 24, 2026 and allocates those operations based on approved Summer 2025 schedules.

• Using Summer 2025 is meant to “largely preserve the status quo” and rejected using Summer 2026 schedules because that would reward airlines for filing aggressive schedules at the airport to gain share (and future gates).

• The final order does not publish a detailed cap table by time of day. Instead it says:
  
  • Daily cap: 2,708 operations
    
  • Effective hours: 6:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.
    
  • Limits will be issued by half-hour, ranging from 30 to 84 operations per half-hour.

United made the largest year-over-year schedule increase at O’Hare by far. This order favors American Airlines, by freezing the 2025 status quo. And American had already done a large rebuild of its schedule for summer 2025.

American will cut around 40 flights, while United will cut around 200 from its announced schedule. These are flights United didn’t really want to actually operate. They’ll lose less money at O’Hare. It was purely strategic flying, meant to bury American and take gates away. With a total of ~ 372 peak day flights being cut from schedules under this order, United absorbs more than half the cut.

That’s because American was expect to get 3 gates back in next year’s re-allocation. Combined with the gates they purchased from Spirit Airlines, they’ll be back to par.

American had gates taken away at the airport because they hadn’t build back their schedule fully after Covid. This was done earlier than expected based on lease documents. A judge refused to grant a restraining order against the gate allocation, because damages are compensable. So that process proceeded, and everyone started jockeying for future gate positions there.

According to data from aviation analytics company Cirium,

• On Sunday, July 20, 2025 American had 483 flights and United had 575

• On Sunday, July 19, 2026 American has been scheduled to operate 526 flights (+43 or 9%) and United 773 (+198 or 34%).

The gate reallocation at O’Hare is expected later this year, driven by 2025 departure data. United has said they expect American to pick up three gates as a result of this. What this FAA order does is stop United from using its 2026 schedule dump to secure more gates inn the 2027 re-allocation.

United had announced about 25% more flying at O’Hare than they were doing pre-pandemic. American was bringing themselves back to pre-pandemic levels, or perhaps 4% more. It’s really United that created this mess, and started trashing American at the airport to analysts and the media saying that their growth plans were unsustainable.

But American absolutely needs its position in Chicago – even if in a narrow sense the flying isn’t profitable – because it’s a crucial spend market for its credit card, that’s the most profitable part of the business, and they’ve fallen behind in both New York and Los Angeles.

It looks like American Airlines is celebrating – AAdvantage members with addresses in Illinois are being offered 1,000 free miles and loyalty points towards status, with the option to register under ‘promotions’ in their account.

Check your Promotions 1000 Free LP’s and Miles!
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At some level, though, I have to wonder what the point of O’Hare building more gates even is, if the FAA is arguing that flight operations at the airport cannot grow.