June 1 was the day that Chicago/O’Hare was required by the terms of its lease to officially publish its new gate map. Even though the gates won’t change hands until October, the deed is done… though American’s objections are still making their way through the courts. Here is what O’Hare will look like in October if the courts don’t force a change:
Image via Chicago Department of Aviation
In the end, there were no surprises, but things did shift around compared to the preliminary map. What changed?
- The three gates in B that are closed due to construction were going to become common-use in the first map (which I missed), but now those will stay with United when they reopen.
- Air Canada will still only have one gate, but it’ll be E2 instead of E3.
- Gates G4 and G6 will now be common-use gates instead of United gates, but United will have use of them while those B gates are under construction.
- United will now get that goofy standalone gate G20 as its own, and presumably the airline will put Newark flights there (next to the Spirit flights, naturally) in order to prevent the rest of its passengers from having to interact with those people.
- While American has gates K1/L2A under construction, it will have use of G5 instead of G19 in addition to G21 which was in the previous map.
- In Terminal 5, Delta will now keep the six gates closest to the main terminal area at the south end with just one oddball at M3 wedged in between Southwest’s three gates. Previously, the southernmost gate was to be the oddball and Southwest had three closer to that end.
If you’ve seen news reports, United is now talking about only gaining five gates instead of six. Why? It’s all thanks to the screwy way that gates are divvied up. The Chicago Department of Aviation doesn’t dole out gates. It gives out linear frontage of gate areas. How those gate areas get used is up to each airline. The linear frontage that United gets did actually increase from the original plan of 11,326 ft to 11,350 ft in the final, so it’s not like United lost anything in the last few months. It’s just a matter of how the gates get moved around. This is still a big win for United.
How big? Well, why don’t we go back and take a look at what changed compared to the current gate layout. I left off the eastern half of Terminal 5 because nothing changed there. They all remain common-use gates.
So what does this mean in the end? Well, depending upon how you look at it, United gains either 5 or 6 gates. The total the city and United both agree on is a whopping 95 in total. American will dip to 59. I find it hard to know what that airline actually loses, because it loses most of the G gates it had. But it used those as regional gates and now there are mainline ones there that take up more room, so it’s squishy. Still, once consruction is done, American will have only two gates on G which is pretty shocking.
One thing I’m not clear on is what happens to JetBlue. The release from Chicago says that JetBlue gets one gate on G. But the map shows no gates for JetBlue. My assumption is that the “unassigned” gate on G will end up going to JetBlue, which would make sense. This way, JetBlue can flip-flop between American and United as partners as much as it wants and still be close to both of them.
Alaska will now just have one gate on G which is a better location for connectivity to partner American anyway. Southwest takes three from Delta over in Terminal 5.
In the end, there are a lot of musical chairs, but essentially United controls Terminals 1 and 2 while American controls all of Terminal 3… except for G gates which are split up in every way possible.
Now the question is… will it hold? I asked American for comment but did not receive any information before publication. The city did confirm that there is still court action in progress, so American is holding out hope that it can find a way to prevent this outcome from becoming reality. You can’t blame the airline, because no matter how you slice it, this is a big win for United.
Update 6/3: American has provided a comment clearly showing it is not slowing down its fight. It’s long, so I’ll just give a shortened version here:
“The Chicago Department of Aviation’s (CDA) premature trigger of the gate reallocation at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) upsets the competitive balance at O’Hare….
“That’s why we recently took legal action against the CDA’s violation of the 2018 Airlines Use and Lease agreement (AULA), which was carefully negotiated to prevent this very issue at hand — by outlining important benchmarks that must be met before the reallocation was triggered in order to ensure that Chicagoans continue to benefit from competition….
