American loses 4 gates to United at ORD.
 

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/airl...cuts-americans

Did they forget about these gates or something like those slots in JFK? Either way it's another failure by the usual suspects in charge. They claim they are going to fight this but they tried to fight the NEalliance and lost as well as the Latam JV.

I think those gates were ran by Air Wisconsin. I could be wrong though.

Not sure that is quite it.

This podcast explains the gate assignment system at ORD.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1bf...RrCO1Z7zaTdnwg

Starting to understand why they added so much on ORD. It was an attempt to squat the slots.

Maybe this is my ignorance or misunderstanding of the ORD gate distribution, but this seems to me like something that will accelerate. It seems like that if more usage = more gates, then losing gates will create less usage, which means AA will lose more gates, which will result in less usage, etc.

Could this become a snowball effect? Maybe I'm just misreading their methodology.

Any chance of cutting/pasting article as it is behind a pay wall?

Is this why they're using the airport construction as an excuse for slower growth?

They can't be that dumb, even in that city. Pretty soon no airlines would have any gates.

It's going to come down to actual utilization of the gates you do have, possibly/likely modified for whatever their market goals are, such as regional feed, more Europe, more west coast, whatever they think benefits the city's economy. Of possibly just whatever brings in the most direct revenue to the airport authority... if they're not properly managed by the local political leaders, airports will naturally drift to prioritize the benefit of the organization itself, vice the city or citizens.

This is not how it works. For example, let's say AA has 30 gates and 25 flights. AA loses 5 gates because the gate:flight ratio required is 1:1. Now AA has 25 gates and 25 flights, no further reductions occur.

So no, a snowball effect is not likely here.

but gate efficiency generally increases with more gates. it’s easier to shove 120 flights into 100 gates than it is to shove 12 flights into 10 gates in the same amount of time. flexibility…

I just went there a couple days ago and waited in the pad for 15 minutes with 5 other aircraft for a gate to open up. I guess our goal is to turn every hub experience into CLT.

Have you not been through there the past two weeks? It’s a hot mess, even by ord standards.

Lol, so true. CLT and MIA you can get in 20 minutes early and still be 15 minutes late to block in.

My comment was regarding previous newsletters going back to last year pointing out the operational challenges the construction projects will present for the alleyways. My takeaway was the alleyways will be more impacted when compared to operations elsewhere on the field. Which I don't think is inaccurate. The waits at the top of the alleys for departures can get somewhat lengthy.

I know he's just another travel blogger, but this guy did a lot of reaching out to the city and other airlines as part of the linked article. The long and the short of it seems to be that the "preferential" gate distribution between tenants gets rebalanced in October for usage based upon the prior year (they apparently start looking at it in Feb). So it makes sense why the recent summer schedule increases have been announced at American.

His take: "What DOES matter is that this is all a silly shell game anyway. Remember, the gates don’t change over until October 1, so United will only get to use those six gates for the last three months of the year. But when the process starts all over again next February? It looks at departure share for all of the previous year. That means United will not have the benefit of those six gates for the first nine months of data which skews things greatly. That means it could very well lose again next year even if it is ramping up. And the cycle will continue since the data will never include more than a quarter of a year with the most recent gate allocation."

United Says It Grabs Six More Gates at O’Hare, But It’s Not Entirely Clear – Cranky Flier

That podcast is horrid and gets a lot of things wrong.

AA took over the Spirit gates (we are already using them) and lost some Air Wisconsin gates. The end result are more of the larger gates for better mainline capacity. Travel bloggers are almost always wrong and look at the date of that podcast, it was produced before AA announced they were expanding service in ORD.

Such as?

....

As I stated above came out before AA's announcement and that supposed ORD "expert" on that podcast is only an expert cause he lived in Chicago and "flys United a lot". lol, okay. That's one of the worst aviation podcasts out there.

We lost 4 gates. Quick google search. It has to do with frontage. Net loss was 7 gates. AA 4. JetBlue 1, Air Canada, 1 and Spirit 1. I think those are the ones. United is turning that footage into 6 gates. They win. We lose. Kirby out smarts again. All revisited soon. And then gates will be juggled again.

Chicago Chiefs came out and said it wasn't true. Either they lied or were lied to or didn't do research. Not good for the base.

Well if google says so. What does google tell you about the L3 through L10 gates where AA NB aircraft are now parked where Spirit used to park? We didn't lose any H and K gates, so what did they take? A few regional G gates where Air Wisconsin used to fly?

lol

.......

The Delta guys are saying they lost 3 gates too.

We were parking mainline jets at G4/G6. Spirit is over there now.

So many articles from multiple sources. How old are you? Look for yourself. We lost gates. Deal with it.

Do you deny we lost gates?

Because the news always get it right lol. ORD Chiefs says it was a net gain of gates and i can see with my own two eyes it was a net gain of gates. We gained all of Spirit's old L gates, which was 5 or 6 gates, and lost what, 2 G gates? We own all of H, K, and L now.

We are also picking up gates on the north side of the L gates. Not sure if those will be RJ or mainlines gates. Our charts show 3 gates, I’m thinking they will be RJ gates.

The final distribution will be announced NLT than June1 and will become effective NLT Oct1. So, what you see today is not the issue, it is what you will see come October that is being discussed.

He does, In another thread he claims we gained some which is incorrect.

Shhhh, now you're actually using knowledge of the airport layout vs Google results. Do YoUr OwN rEsEaRcH.

Unless we see United in H/K/L (doubt), the math ain't mathing for the "United wins AA loses again" crowd.

You left out G.

Only one of them seems to truly know what he is talking about.

No I didn't. That's all RJs. It's quite possible we gave up some RJ gates like this thread is about but gained in L. Probably what all the confusion is about. Company said we had a net increase. Spirit has been going out of E gates last time I was at work.

Here is an update.

On Friday, May 30, the CDA sent its airline partners the final gate layout for O’Hare International Airport as part of the 2025 gate reallocation process, triggered in January by United Airlines in accordance with the airport’s 2018 Airline Use and Lease Agreement (AULA).The final gate layout, available at FlyChicago.com, awards the following preferential-use gates to the following airlines:

·Air Canada: One gate at Concourse E

·Alaska Airlines: One gate at Concourse G

·American Airlines: 59 gates across Concourses G, H, K and L

·Delta Air Lines: Seven gates at Concourse M

·JetBlue: One gate at Concourse G

·Southwest Airlines: Three gates at Concourse M

·Spirit Airlines: Four gates at Concourse G

·United Airlines: 95 gates across Concourses B, C, E, F and G.

https://www.flychicago.com/SiteColle...ibits_2025.pdf

So IamSuss was wrong, AA did lose five gates. Half of G is no longer AA when the entire concourse used to be all AA.

Pending litigation

Overseen by Chicago judges? Spoiler Alert: it won't be in favor of a Texas based corporation.

Great news for SkyWeezy and BlowJet..

haha. You mean Chicago politics are corrupt?!

Lol yeah...they forget this is the most notoriously corrupt city in the country. It's almost a badge of honor to be bought and paid for in Chicago.