Why is O'Hare so uniquely screwed up?

Factual Questions
1

I’m staying in Buffalo tonight, aiming to fly to Chicago tomorrow morning. I checked the FAA site, and according to them, O’Hare is suffering from SIX HOUR arrival delays. Six hour delays, given the shrotness of my trip, effectively means I’m not going.

But according to the same site, not one other airport in the upper midwest - not one, not a big one, not a small one - is experiencing substantial delays. Not even Midway, which is in the same damned city.

I understand O’Hare is a massive airport, but how can it be this messed up and Minneapolis/St. Paul or Milwaukee or Detroit aren’t?

2

I’m sure that (and hope that) Broomstick will be in to expound upon this subject shortly, but the basic problem is that the number of flights scheduled in and out of the airport is pretty much equal to the number that the flight controllers can handle under perfect conditions. Any adverse conditions then cause backups. It’s been a serious problem since the mid-2000s, and would have become a problem even sooner than that if the 9/11 attacks hadn’t happened. The airlines have actually mitigated it somewhat by making peak-hour flights more expensive and rescheduling flights more evenly throughout the day (if I remember correctly), but that can only go so far. There’s a runway expansion proceeding now, but construction projects like this in Chicago move at the pace of molasses in January.

By the way, Ed Zotti, you might want to alert Cecil to this post. It might make a good Straight Dope Chicago article.

3

The busier the airport, the harder it is to add more flights after it is shut down. They stopped 1200 flights. There are still 1200 flights worth of people who need to get in/out of Chicago on top of the next days 1200 flights. That means adding 50 flights an hour continuously over 24 hrs to an already busy schedule.

4

You might be surprised to discover that Chicago O’Hare is the 2nd busiest airport in terms ofaircraft landing and taking off… in the world.

5

In addition, if the planes never got out then there isn’t a parking space for the next plane coming in. It’s a real mess when this happens. Imagine the logistics of plowing 2 feet of snow off of 7 runways and continually deicing aircraft until departure.

6

Meh, thats only 16,000 landings a week with 7 runways. Try flying into Oshkosh with 3 runways and 25,000 landings a week.

7

There usually is no snow during that week, though.

8

Followup question: Why doesn’t Minneapolis et al take up some of the slack?

One universal problem is that it’s very hard to open a new airport due to NIMBY, despite their enormous public benefits. This applies everywhere in the world.

9

Well, there’s NIMBY, and then there’s NIMBY.

While i don’t have too much sympathy for some people who succumb to NIMBYism on issues that have little impact on their day-to-day existence, i can’t think of anything too much more disruptive to your whole way of life than having an airport built next door and finding yourself suddenly under the flightpath of hundreds of passenger jets every day.

I have a friend who lives under the (usually outgoing) flight path at Sydney Airport, and it is fucking loud. When the Los Angeles- or London-bound 747s take off, all her windows rattle and you can’t hold a conversation inside the house. Now, she knew when she bought the house that it was under the flight path, but i’d be pretty fucking pissed if something like this happened to me after i decided where to live and committed myself to a 30-year mortgage.

10

It does take up some of the slack. And Chicago is surrounded by airports that could handle regional flights. Not sure how well they’re utilized. The problem is, if Chicago is snowed in it’s likely all the surrounding airports are too.

11

I used to work for a company that found hotel rooms for stranded passengers so I can tell you the airlines the best the can to avoid this.

People refuse to listen.

To be fair, O’Hare is too small. They could add another two runways easily and have the planes to fill them. O’Hare is surrounded by suburbs that have been fighting expansion since the 1960s. This is why O’Hare lost the “world’s busiest airport” title.

Chicago also is a major hub to United and a minor hub to American.

You have to understand airlines use the “Spoke” model for flights. You have to think of it like spokes on a wheel. They route everything through a “hub.” For instance, Delta has a main hub in Atlanta, NW had two major hubs in Detroit and Minneapolis and United has hubs in San Francisco and Denver. American in Dallas / Ft Worth.

What this means is, if the hub gets back up, people miss flights. THIS is the cause of problem. In Chicago, United and American asked people to delay flights if possible on Saturday. They said, there would be no fees if they changed. Few people took them up on this.

Airlines are NOT first come first serve. Suppose you’re on a 9am flight and it doesn’t go. But a later flight at 1pm does go. Well they don’t bump all those people off the 1pm flight and make room for the passengers that didn’t go at 9am. One exception is first class. They often will ask the 9am first class passengers that didn’t get to go, if they will take a regular seat on the 1pm flight, then bump those people off.

People expect things from airlines that aren’t going to happen. I worked at a hotel by O’Hare in 95. The plane broke down. They had one flight per day. They put the passengers up at our hotel on Monday. On Tuesday morning, the airline called me and said, “Mark, the plane won’t be fixed, tell everyone checking out to call the airline and that they shouldn’t bother checking out and coming to the airport. The airline paid for another day.”

I told all the guests, not ONE SINGLE ONE stayed. They all checked out and went to the airport, only to return a few hours later. Why? I don’t know. If the plane ain’t working, it ain’t working.

(In case anyone wonders, airlines pay for hotel rooms when it’s their fault. If it’s considered an “act of God,” they do not pay. Weather is an "act of God. Generally airlines pay for first class passengers regardless, as they do anything to keep first class business)

I still remember Carol the gate manager at Detroit. I was on the phone to her and I heard a customer yelling about the weather and the delays and how important he was. She finally got so frustrated she said, “Do you want to be late Mr Smith, or do you want to be THE late Mr Smith.” :slight_smile:

12

Improving your odds of getting in and out of O’Hare, especially during winter, is sort of an art form. My wife is a very frequent business traveler, and I’m amazed at the amount of her brain that is occupied with data about specific flights, routes, and equipment, all with an eye toward giving her the best chance of getting where she wants to go.

The only thing I can consistently remember is that the bigger the plane, the less likely it’ll get bumped. It’s a consequence of the hub-and-spoke model; a 747 not making it’s scheduled time creates a cascade of problems with people missing connections, and that plane not being available for its next flight. If a regional jet doesn’t take off, you’ve got a handful of people to deal with, many of whom weren’t going on to another destination. Imagine a 747’s worth of travelers now having to find lodging, or alternate flights, getting rebooked the next day, etc.

My wife used to fly between Chicago and Dallas a lot. Most of the flights were regional jets and MD-80s, but there was an early evening flight from DFW to ORD that was a 777. She made it home many Friday nights that her colleagues did not, because she always booked the 777.

13

From anecdotal evidence, I suspect United’s prominent presence at O’Hare is a big part of the reason as well.
The last (and probably final) time I flew United a few years ago, their schedule remained in total disarray 5 full days after a major snowstorm. Operating under bankruptcy, their budget was so tight that they had apparently zero margin for error when planes and crews were not where they were supposed to be – and they’re certainly not going to fly empty planes around if they can help it. So it could take days, if not weeks, to get everything back to normal again. I don’t know if it’s any better these days, but I’ve never seen that level of domino effect on any other airline.

14

<wink wink nudge nudge>

They are adding four (albeit while taking two older ones out), with the main advantage being that most of them will be parallel (in accordance with the prevailing onshore and offshore winds), hence useable all at once more or less.

15

Minneapolis (also Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, etc.) would LOVE to take up some of the slack, but that’s not the way the airlines work.

Part of the decision to make an airport a hub is how much traffic the city would get even if it weren’t a hub. Chicago has a lot more people who want to fly to or from there, ergo, it makes more sense to make Chicago a hub.

St. Louis was the domestic hub for TWA for years, but even during that time, TWA still had international flights from Chicago. When American bought TWA, they decided it didn’t make much sense to have a hub in St. Louis and another in Chicago, so they shut down the hub in St. Louis and rerouted a lot of their service from the old TWA cities to Chicago.

Minneapolis is a hub for Northwest because Northwest has always been based in Minneapolis. It will be interesting to see, now that United is buying Continetal, how long Cleveland remains a major hub for the combined airline.

16

Agreed. I sent a link to Ed.

17

You poor bastard.

18

I think the problem may be partly with that FAA software. There were over 300 flights canceled at Midway last night. So maybe “canceled” doesn’t count for “airport conditions” or delays, but it still means that there were a lot of unhappy passengers at Midway. (1400 flights canceled at O’Hare.)

The snow was coming down sideways, dude. I’m 200 pounds and had trouble staying upright while walking. I couldn’t see my car from my front door 20 feet away, it was so white. The Windy City earned her name with yesterday’s snowstorm, and that’s not good for flyin’.

ETA: Oh, and the airports aren’t in the same city at all, actually. Yeah, I know that’s what it says on your tickets, but Midway’s in the southern end of Chicago, and O’Hare is off in the western suburb of Des Plaines…ish. The signs aren’t so good out that way. But not in Chicago proper, by any stretch. They’re 45 minutes’ drive apart on a good day, well over an hour in heavy traffic.

19

Thi is very common, actually. McGee-Tyson is the “Knoxville” Airport, but it’s located in an unincorporated area 20 minutes from town near Alcoa and Maryville. Sea-Tac is nomially the “Seattle” airport, but it’s actually located entirely in Tacoma, and well away from Seattle.

20

Yep. And what it means for flyers is that the two “Chicago” airports sometimes have surprisingly different weather. I don’t know about earlier in the day, but by the 10:00 newscast last night, the snowstorm made a pretty sharp line on the map as it moved east, so actually Midway was still being hit by snow, while O’Hare was clear (but obviously still dealing with the effects from earlier.)