I understand that O’Hare was the busiest airport by annual passengers until 1998. That year, Hartsfield-Jackson took the lead. Wikipedia says that Atlanta’s airport continues to grow, while Chicago’s continues to shrink. What could be the causes this shift?
Schedule reductions from major carriers and larger hub-spoke operations from ATL, flight caps at ORD, passenger trends, just to name a few.
I wouldn’t be suprised if the 1998 shift had something to do with poaching by DIA. DIA and O’hare serve the same basic service as Large hubs in the middle of the country in Airline thought, and both are major United hubs. Around 1998 was when DIA finally started to get confidence as the early problems had been sorted through.
Lots of reasons.
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Major investment and expansion at Midway Airport that lured the major carriers to shift some of their routes to that airport creating a net reduction at ORD.
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United’s overall business issues have caused a reduction in both number of flights and passenger capacity. A corresponding bump in Southwest’s traffic helped Hartsfield and Midway.
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Overall capacity restriction around ORD due to it’s urban location.
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Denver International increasing traffic as a central hub for United.
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American shifting it’s hub traffic to Dallas from ORD.
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An increase in direct flights to second tier Midwestern cities cutting back on the number of short layovers in Chicago.
It’s worth noting that O’Hare still has the most flights in and out.
Here’s an interesting article from a couple years back about the politics around fixing the issues at O’Hare.
http://www.atwonline.com/magazine/article.html?articleID=1063
ORD will grow if current expansion plans are cleared. In the last week, a judge blocked demolition in an area of Chicago that was scheduled to begin. ORD/County/City already owned property but that doesn’t stop lawyers from extracting some additional billing time from neighborhood associations.
Judge delayed his order allowing the demolition to allow parties in Bensenville to pursue an appeal. That was on 11 August.
There is a desperate need for another runway at O’Hare. It’s having an effect on international flights as well as their domestic business. The delays in and arond the Bensonville area have been nothing short of larceny.
Huh? Midway I can see, but why would Southwest’s traffic increasing help ATL? Southwest does not now serve, nor has it ever served, ATL?
ORD has two cemeteries within its perimeter. They’ve toyed, I think, with moving them, but that’s not an easy sell.
ORD also seems to have major access problems. Many is the time I’ve been stuck in traffic outside the airport trying to get to the departure level, for 30 minutes or longer.
The expansion is to include a western access of some sort.
O’Hare is enroaching on territory outside Chicago’s jurisdiction not to mention outside of Cook County. they proceeded to buy out property in and around the Bensenville area using tactics that are well… the kind that any big city with a history of organized crime could be proud of. Not to mention there being 2 historic cemetaries in the area, that they insist they can just dig up and move, which is upsetting people in the area. Throw into the mix the teamsters, the Daley political machinery pressuring its friends in high places to move away from a third airport in Peotone (which is outside of Chicago’s jurisdiction far enough that they wouldn’t be able to get a piece of the action), and the general adversity between Chicago and its suburbs and it turns into a really complicated, and really expensive battle driven by greed and ego’s.