Originally Posted by 32LatT10

As someone living in ORD (disclaimer, not a DL pilot, just a DL loyalist passenger who lurks here) this is an excellent consideration and truth be told, you may not know all the answers yet yourself depending on where you are at in life.

Specifically, how do you foresee your lifestyle in the future compared to what it is today? For many people I have known, getting married and having kids is the watershed moment for them in this city. It often means trading your 1 or 2 bedroom in Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville or West Loop for a house in the suburbs and their public school system. Your alternatives are to spend a small fortune on private schools (or send your kids to a Chicago public school...I'll just let that one lie). I live in the city proper and there is virtually no one in my building with school age children.

If the above does not apply to your situation, you'll still have the commuting aspect to consider. I'll let the experts weigh in on that...but ORD generally has a decent amount of mainline lift to the hubs. RJs creep in to some of the markets during the slower months (like now). The schedule has been really drawn down the past few months while they constrain capacity to keep fares up (5x ORDATL - oy vey) which makes timing less convenient. DL recently moved to T5 from T2. The DL gates and new Sky Club are nice. The rest of T5 is a bit of a 1990s time warp, it's a pain to get to from the CTA and it's on an island from the rest of the terminal complex (last minute change of flights to another carrier is not convenient and it's not connected airside). DTW would be the only base that is driveable and requires taking Chicago traffic into consideration depending on where you're starting from.