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.
- Daily cap: 2,708 operations
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!
by
u/dmxwidget in
americanairlines
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.
Probably a decent idea because the delays were getting absurd there.
@O’Hare Is My Second Home — What say ye, oh Fine Illinois Brethren??
Would more physical gates st ORD help alleviate the taxiing delays there? I’ve waited 30 minutes to get to my gate after landing.
@Chopsticks — I heard it was more-so that there are quite a few taxiways still under construction. (Feels like the Van Wyck in NYC… never-ending road work.)
Another strategic failure for Kirby and UA; this is now the 3rd UA hub where the FAA has had to intervene to keep operations from falling off a cliff.
and, yes, AA won in its efforts to slowly rebuild ORD and prevent UA from dumping flights to try to run AA out of ORD.
Won’t United get more gates in 2027 based on their flying with the gates they got from the reallocation last year over a longer period of time? It’s the lag effect of how the airport measures the traffic, right? So United will lose some in 2026 only to regain in 2027. Presumably American may gain a gate or 2 back in 2028 because they’ll be flying with more gates in 2027.
Hah good!
Phuck United and Phuck Maga Kirby.
That dwarf.
1990: Yeah, it’s tiring doing the Grand Tour of O’Hare every time I land. Yesterday wasn’t too bad when I got back home, but that’s because I landed at a time that isn’t a bank for UA or AA. But it’s going to remain bad until construction finishes, and given that this is Chicago, I won’t live to see that.
@vasukiv In the FAA order it mentioned that the slots allocations for ORD will be based on the flown 2025 Summer schedule regardless of the number of gates per airline. It basically locks in the 2025 status quo (which was a positive for AA since they will gain gates in the reallocation).
So despite UA getting more gates, it will be unable to actually utilize them at a higher level since their slots will be in line with their 2025 summer schedule (despite getting more gates). So UA’s utilization per gate will drop significantly as they won’t be able to increase flying.
This basically just locks in the status quo and ends the gates allocation battle for now – the net result is looking like AA will return to its pre-COVID gate amount while UA might be +1 or 2.
It doesn’t matter how many flights each airline has to cut. If the respective airline can’t adjust the schedules correctly or, handle teh IROPS they gain from a given event. No “reduction” will help.
case in point- AA’s recovery is always tragic. pathetic really.
Gary has a good point about the new gates. However, given the nationwide shortage of controllers, having enough controllers to handle the additional flights may not be possible. One wonders if there is a process for evaluate both the airport and the controllers and how they limit flights. If controllers are the limit, I could see a longer timeframe for increasing flights at an airport. A hard limit on runway or taxiway operations would need different measures.
@O’Hare Is My Second Home — Glad everything worked out for you!