American Airlines regaining 3 Chicago O’Hare gates – despite United CEO Scott Kirby’s best efforts – is official and that will happen in October. I shared that this was expected to happen back in April and FOIA’d the actual new gate (linear frontage) map.
- Last year United Airlines gained 5 gates and American Airlines lost 4 gates. The city re-allocates gates each year based on prior year flights, although they ran this process a year earlier than provided for in the lease agreement (likely to benefit the hometown carrier, whose headquarters they want to keep from moving to Denver). American failed to get it blocked in the courts.
- American began rebuilding its O’Hare operations last year. Coming out of the pandemic, they had retired too many planes and were unable to rebuild everywhere. Chicago got delayed, and that wound up costing them.
- United’s Scott Kirby saw an opportunity to push American out of having a hub there for good. He tried to get financial analysts to pressure American to walk away from Chicago. His airline flooded the market with scheduled flights. These were going to be money-losing flights they didn’t even really want, and that the airport couldn’t handle, but they were designed to take gates away from American.
- The FAA stepped in and said that the airport and air traffic control couldn’t handle it, so they instituted flight caps. United argued that flights should be allocated based on the schedules airlines wanted to fly, i.e. that the planned increase by United should mean American would have to decrease their presence even further. The government did not buy this.
With United’s gambit to drive American out failed, and American rebuilding its schedules, they’re back in the Chicago ballgame. American also bought two gates from Spirit Airlines before it went out of business, which I was first to report. As a result, American has a net gain of one gate compared to when gates were snatched out from under them at O’Hare a year ago.
ORD Oct ‘26 Gate Reallocation – American gains 3 gates, reclaims 50+% of Concourse G
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u/Financial-Public-336 in
americanairlines
In other words, American Airlines is now in a stronger position at Chicago O’Hare than they were before Kirby’s United tried to drive them out! United did a lot of trolling, but did not accomplish their goal of monopolizing the market.
United will still be up one gate from the reallocation, and one gate they acquired from Spirit. So that’s two more gates than before, versus one more for American, slightly widening their lead at the airport. Indeed, United has more than 40% of the ‘linear frontage’ in the airport’s terminals. Somehow they thought it wasn’t going to be a competition problem to dump capacity in order to leverage FAA and City of Chicago processes to drive a competitor out of the market and gain even greater share.
American is refreshing its L concourse club at the airport, and has woken up to the importance of the Chicago market for its Citibank credit card partnership.
American lost relevance in New York and Los Angeles, and as a result spend on its cobrand credit cards has falled from number one amongst airlines to number three. They need to retain and grow their position in Chicago because relevance to high spending customers is how they’ll earn a profit.
American in Chicago is laughable. I switched two years ago and will never go back. Our company switched to American which annoyed me at the time and what a wake up call it was! Honestly United’s app alone should convert American customers. AA’s is useless, doesn’t show anything and United’s is 10X better. How and why I stuck with them for so many years is beyond me, but I will tell anyone thinking of switching, once you do, life is so much better on the other side! The network is unmatched. Glad to see them trying to fight but they’ll never be what I (and so many others wanted) them to be.
**Our company switched to United from American** edit, sorry was on a rant!
We switched from UA to AA about 5 years ago and cannot believe how much better the upgrades and opportunities have been. The only thing I miss from united is the app. One world Emerald is better than when I was United1k. At least for the traveling that I do (BA, Cathay, JAL)
Occasionally Karma wins, and a bully gets his comeuppance.
These airport maps with colors reminds me of Cranky’s LAX discussion from June where he labeled foreign airlines as “Cats and Dogs”… LOL.
The real winner here folks is Delta. While AA & UA fight over gates at ORD, DL continues to dominate SAV & SGU.
FWIW my experience on UA 1K has been better than AA ExPlat.
“Momma Dunn says:
July 9, 2026 at 12:11 pm
The real winner here folks is Delta. While AA & UA fight over gates at ORD, DL continues to dominate SAV & SGU.”
golf clap. well done
This is a complete repudiation of UA and Kirby’s strategies.
The FAA imposed capacity limits on EWR and then ORD which limited UA’s abililty to dump capacity and now the airport gives AA back the gates that UA thought it would steal.
This is karma at its best.
and now Delta’s butt kicking on the west coast and TPAC is about ready to kick in
Sooo about those ORD taxi times…
@L737 — For. Real. Dawg. I’ve got a WN flight via MDW coming up, and am honestly just glad it’s not ORD, for that specific reason. (No lounges, though; boo-hoo.)
1990: They have a small Priority Pass lounge at MDW now. Always very crowded, though.
@1990 — Putting your CSR perks to good use? Nice! I recently had an hour and 40 minute taxi on a 1.5 hour flight at ORD, taking off 2 minutes before crew timeout. Have a couple other flights scheduled in and out later this month (not a connection thankfully) – wish me luck!
@L737 — ‘CITIZEN, an hour and forty-minute taxi on a ninety-minute flight is a VIOLATION. You are tempting fate by returning to that sector. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED. MOVE ALONG.’
@1990 — *Beep Boop* Yup! Seriously re-considering…
United’s ap is horrible. Takes 50 clicks to change a seat. Oh, if I fly united in first class I can board after a 50 people have already boarded. United is a trash heap.