The arms race at Chicagoʻs OʻHare airport looks like itʻs about to be put on pause now that the Federal Aviation Administration has decided to step into the fray. This is good news for travelers, but it is entirely unclear which airlines will come out winners at this point.

The feds have decided to convene a meeting Wednesday with all interested parties to discuss what to do about the overscheduling situation this summer at O’Hare. The meeting is open to all airlines and the Chicago Department of Aviation. You can be sure both American and United will be there.

The basic point of the meeting is to figure out how to come up with a schedule that can actually be operated. As the FAA notes, peak days have more than 3,080 daily operations this year compared to only 2,680 last summer. That is not sustainable. This has been an open secret for months now in the wake of American and United bulking up their operations. There was never any chance that all of these flights could operate without serious operational problems. Now the FAA has to figure out how it wants to implement this.

The reality is that O’Hare can support about 100 departures and 100 arrivals per hour on a good day, with some wiggle room. The FAA says that means it can usually support about 2,800 total daily operations once you take into account the middle of the night when nothing is flying.

With that in mind, I turned to my trusty Cirium data to see where things stand. I looked at total operations by day for a random Monday in July this year and last year. The FAA says that it will look at flying in half-hour increments, so that’s how I broke it down. You can see where the pain points will be quite clearly.

Let’s start with 2025. Here is a look at operations by half hour on a day that had 2,502 scheduled passenger operations. (Yes, one flaw is I didn’t look at cargo and non-scheduled operations, but you get the point.)

O’Hare Scheduled Passenger Operations by Half Hour – July 14, 2025

^{Data via Cirium}

Were there times when O’Hare exceeded the 100 operations per half hour threshold? Absolutely. Most notably it was clogged with United’s big morning departure bank between 7 and 7:30am as well as the airline’s big arrival bank between 6:30 and 7pm. But look at the half hour right after those times. There was slack in the system to accommodate this overuse. The airport could function.

Now let’s take a look at the plan for this year.

O’Hare Scheduled Passenger Operations by Half Hour – July 13, 2026

^{Data via Cirium}

Oh my. There are now nine half hours that exceed the airport’s max operating limit compared to three last year. And that 7am bank has become a monster with a total of 136 scheduled operations. The problem now is that instead of having a lot of slack in the 7:30am time period, there are still 94 scheduled operations. This can start to cascade throughout the day, and it is going to be ugly.

Keep in mind, I’m still just talking about a blue-sky day. Imagine what happens when storms roll through. It will be absolute chaos.

The airline industry has been talking about this ever since the build up between American and United began, so it felt like a game of chicken. Now, the government is stepping in to put an end to it.

The plan for Wednesday is this. The FAA will decide which half hour slots are problematic. It will then take each airline into a room individually and beat them until they cut flights.

Just kidding. It will actually go like this.

… the air carrier will be asked to offer flight reductions or schedule modifications…. Any offer of flight reductions should specify the precise number of arrivals and departures, if any, the submitting air carrier is willing to remove from each of the severely congested periods… indicating whether the flight operation(s) would be cancelled or moved to another time period. The offer may not be explicitly contingent on specific flight reductions by other air carriers, but may be conditioned on the Administrator’s implementation of an overall reduction of specified numbers of flight operations toward the target during the
periods in question.

In the end, the FAA will put forth the schedule with voluntary cuts. If that solves the problem, great. If not, that’s when the beatings begin. Again, just kidding. They will go through the same boring process over and over until there’s a solution.

I’ve had some people reach out to me saying they think this is terrible news for United since it is so much bigger. Others think this was a stroke of brilliance on United’s part. I tend to fall in the latter camp, and I actually figure this was United’s plan the entire time. I would be shocked if United actually thought it was going to operate all those flights it filed.

The way I see it is this. Up until about 2018, United had about 100 more daily departures than American. In 2018 that increased closer to about 150. When United began to recover during the pandemic before American did, it found itself back with a 150 departure advantage, but that was off a lower base. American’s daily departures had dropped to around 350. You know what, let’s just look at the Cirium data chart before I go on.

United O’Hare Departures vs American by Day Over Time

^{Data via Cirium}

So with United at 500 daily and American at only 350, United had a huge advantage. But then American decided it was time to ramp up in Chicago. Seeing the gains it had made already while American was down, United decided it should go all out to try to stop American from gaining ground.

So, United added its own flights every time American did, and often, United would add even more. This summer, American is at around 520 daily departures with United as high as 780. United has increased its lead to having a more than 250 daily departure advantage. Or at least, that’s what it filed.

Does any of this make sense from a demand perspective? No. But this is a strategic move. I’m betting United never figured it would fly those 780 daily flights. Instead, if it could keep its ratio compared to American high enough, when the FAA inevitably came knocking on the door to reduce flying, they could proportionally reduce flying individually. And then, United would still have cemented a massive flight percentage premium over what American has, just with everyone having fewer flights overall.

Of course, we don’t know how the FAA will look at this. Will it agree to reductions based on what’s filed? Or will it look at what flew last year, or perhaps pre-pandemic? Chances are American will argue for going back as far as possible while United wants to use this summer. We will know more soon.

Regardless of what happens, United is likely going to still have a very substantial number of flights compared to American when all is said and done. And that had to be the airline’s ultimate goal.