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The unbridled growth of American Airlines and United Airlines at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is over for now.<\/p>\n
Following a rapid run-up in schedules this summer as the airlines fought to preserve gate access, the Federal Aviation Administration called a pause. The regulator, citing schedules that exceed the total daily runway capacity of ORD, said in a Federal Register notice<\/a><\/span> on Tuesday that it plans to cap total daily operations at the airport in order to avoid severe “delays, cancellations, and inconvenience to the traveling public.”<\/p>\n The rub? Getting airlines \u2014 primarily American and United, which dominate O’Hare \u2014 to reduce schedules to no more than 2,800 daily operations, down from as many as 3,080 operations on peak days this summer.<\/p>\n The situation at ORD was years in the making. Airlines agreed in 2018 to a new way to allocate gates \u2014 or “linear frontage” as the agreement puts it \u2014 at the airport under a use-it-or-lose-it formula. After a COVID-era suspension, the formula resulted in American losing five gates and United gaining a roughly equal number when the changes took effect in October 2025.<\/p>\n This year, American is expected to gain as many as three gates back \u2014 but, speaking in January, United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline was drawing a “line in the sand<\/a><\/span>” on any further gate gains by American.<\/p>\n “We’re not going to allow them to win a single gate at our expense in 2026,” he said. “We’re going to add as many flights as are required to make sure that we keep our gate count the same in Chicago. We’re just going to stay focused.”<\/p>\n Enter the summer 2026 schedules. Immediately following Kirby’s comments, American added three new routes<\/a><\/span> from ORD to places like Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) near Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE) in South Carolina. United responded days later with its own five-route expansion<\/a><\/span>, plus additional flights on another 80 routes.<\/p>\n “This is not meaningful growth \u2014 it is a ploy to overschedule the airport to manipulate a provision which was meant to promote competition, seemingly without regard for ORD customers, team members or partners,” David Seymour, chief operating officer of American, and Nathaniel Pieper, chief commercial officer of American, told staff in a memo Tuesday viewed by TPG.<\/p>\n “United’s reactive overcapacity is meant to undermine ORD’s status as a dual hub,” they added.<\/p>\n Reward your inbox with the TPG Daily newsletter<\/p>\n Join over 700,000 readers for breaking news, in-depth guides and exclusive deals from TPG\u2019s experts<\/p>\n