What a difference a day makes. After writing about the escalating war between United and American yesterday, United has decided it is done messing around. The airline is announcing this morning that it is adding five new cities from Chicago and is going to soar to 750 peak day departures this summer.
On a call yesterday with media, United EVP Communications and Advertising Josh Earnest said this isn’t about gaining linear gate frontage — the proxy that O’Hare uses for divvying up gates. Instead, he said it’s about oblierating a competitor. I’m kidding. He wouldn’t say that… out loud. No, he said the airline is doing this to “win the hearts and minds of Chicago.” And there is something to that, but it’s a story that takes some telling.
SVP Global Network Planning and Alliances Patrick Quayle got more into the weeds by explaining that United has seen its share of local traffic, especially business travel, soar in Chicagoland as it has poured airplanes into O’Hare and worked to improve its product and operation. Not more than 10 years ago, American was in the lead, but now United is well ahead. That is true.
But would United really be adding all these new flights if American wasn’t ramping up on its own? I say no way. But in the end, United absolutely wants to be a dominant number one in Chicago, so if American grows, it isn’t a surprise to see it do the same to maintain competitiveness even if it means reducing profitability for a time.
United isn’t going to do this by getting more gates, but it is going to improve utilization during the non-peak times when there is slack in the system, and it is growing a new late night bank. This is on top of what’s already been planned this year, which as you can see below, is substantial:
Average Daily Departures by Month for Large Hubs Prior to United Increase
Data via Cirium
United in summer 2019 was around 600 daily departure from O’Hare. It has been building back to that point ever since, and before today’s announcement the airline was going to be around 650 daily this summer. Now, it’s growing by another 100 daily.
Twenty of those daily flights will come through the addition of five new destinations, all flown 4x daily on 50-seat jets.
- Champaign/Urbana (IL) from April 30
- Kalamazoo (MI) from April 30
- La Crosse (WI) from May 7
- Lansing (MI) from May 7
- Bloomington/Normal (IL) from May 7
It won’t surprise you to hear that American already flies to these five cities from O’Hare, usually 2 or 3x daily, so United is besting the airline on frequency.
These markets are not strong performers for American in terms of loads. For the 12 months ending October 2025, Champaign/Urbana was the only one to see higher than a 70 percent load factor sitting at 72.4. The lowest was Lansing at 63.3 percent. Now, United will more than double capacity in the market, so… good luck with that to all involved.
United’s thesis is that by building up a reliable operation that can get you anywhere, more people will select away from American and toward United. And American’s bread-and-butter from Chicago has been those small cities that United left unserved. Now United isn’t even going to give that up.
Here’s a look at the markets American has on the books that United does not from O’Hare after this change:
Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
(That one hidden under HPN is JFK.) We are down to the dregs here. Frankly, we were down to the dregs before, but United still decided it was worth flying 200 seats a day into these five new town just to escalate the fight. I can’t imagine this will be profitable, but it’s also pretty small in the scheme of things. Besdies, this is only part of the escalation.
United is also adding frequencies in 80 existing markets. Though we won’t see those specifics until the schedules are loaded, it’s an across-the-board hike with cities as large as Los Angeles and as small as Dayton mentioned. I imagine in a place like Dayton with five daily flights, it will just get access to a sixth bank. In LA? There’s already 12 daily, so I have no idea where this will be shoe-horned.
The reality of the situation is this. United CEO Scott Kirby has said he only likes to pick fights when he has the high ground. United is bigger than American in Chicago, and it does better at grabbing the most important parts of the local market these days. United says it is making money in Chicago while American is losing. Both are probably true. But now, United is willing to at the very least make less (or quite possibly lose money depending upon how far this goes) while American will have to lose even more to keep up this fight. It’s bad news for both airlines, but it’s worse for American.
Think of this like the fight for Greenland. United (States) isn’t going to get what it wants and have Greenland to itself. But Denmark (American) is probably going to have to find a happy place where it can still be in Greenland, but it can get United (States) to back off from… madness. It’s hard to know where that point is right about now in Chicago, but with United having the higher ground, it will probably be up to American to decide if it wants to keep escalating or if it chooses to look for an off-ramp.
