ORD Announces Major Expansion, DL Wants In On It
 

Mayor Emmanuel and ORD officials announced a major expansion of terminal space at ORD today. T5 gets 9 new int'l gates with one to accommodate A380s. T2 gets demolished, replaced and expanded. Expansion also planned for T1 and T3.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ens-soon-after

Interestingly, embedded in the story was the following comment: "Delta, for instance, after all but abandoning O'Hare a few years ago, now uses eight gates and wants a "significant' expansion."

Very interesting as I thought DL had no interested in ORD other than connecting it to hubs. I wonder what they mean by "significant." Let the speculation begin!

Pure speculation here, but I could see DL wanting to connect ORD more with the west coast (either more/more mainline SLC or flights to LAX and SEA). Also, I could see DL wanting to consolidate ops during the winter when they run CDG so that they can have all of their flights out of one area instead of being split between Terminals 2 and 5.

Delta wants ORD to west coast and europe for starters.

Do you really think DL wants more Europe over what it already has? I can't imagine Europe is anything but fierce competition out of ORD and DL has no connections on the stateside. The only reason they do the winter flight to CDG is to take over for AF. I do recall that they were thinking of doing winter LHR as well but nothing ever came of that.

I could see one delta flight maybe 4 or 5x per week to lhr ams cdg... o/d traffic would be enough. I could also see ord to florida as well.

Florida I could see also. Also perhaps seasonal and/or less than daily CUN. DL seems to love doing Saturday CUN service from a whole host of places. I think west coast is definitely the most likely though.

Given that western Europe is within 757 range from ORD, I could see possibly some sort of less than weekly service, but I think it's less likely than west coast.

Agreed with everything u said. Maybe also throw in a sju or sjd.

DL already has this through all of the their JV partners.

what confuses me is that if DL wants expansion then why have the reduced their number of gates in T2? UA has creeped down T2 well into spaces that used to be occupied by DL. DL did take over the old US gate but I still think they are down a gate or two from a couple of years back.

My sense is that very little international makes sense given the strength of the UA and AA hubs here and the fact that nearly every major carrier in Europe and Asia already flies into ORD so I see little opportunity to DL here without a hub and I can't imagine that happening.

I could see service to SEA and +/- LAX (though there are five carriers already flying ORD/MDW - LAX). Aside from this, I'm struggling to see how or where DL expands. I live in ORD and would love to see DL increase their flight option out of here. In particular, I'd love to see connectivity with large domestic business destination and major FL airports though I fear I may be holding my breath.

Im a chicago native dont currently live there but fly through often. Lax sfo pdx and sea are no brainers. I could also see bos. All the typical florida routes are no brainers. Cancun and a few carribean mexico seasonal destinations. And I really think delta will eventually try Europe. Growing up i remember when ord was a delta hub.

As much as I would love to see it, I don't think we'll see ORD returning to the glory days that it once was for DL anytime soon. I do think any expansion will be somewhat limited and hesitant (compared to the full-blast expansion of SEA, I think anything will trickle in slowly as DL tests the waters). SFO I just don't see happening with both ends of the routes being massive hubs for UA. PDX I could see, though I think it would be much further down the road and would only follow after SEA and LAX. BOS I would also say may be pretty far up on the list of possibilities along with maybe something like RDU. Given that DL already does an MKE-BOS, I could see them potentially trying an ORD-BOS.

Those are the exact routes I thought DL would like to add out of ORD...maybe SJC instead of or in addition to SFO. But in rank order I would say for DL priorities

ORD to:

SEA
LAX
BOS
SFO/SJC
PDX

Then perhaps MEX once the JV with AM goes through
And some wild cards being

RDU
IND
CMH

very bad connection experiences here

I really hope they don't expand too much there. ORD is an absolute mess all winter, and with AA and UA even the hint of snow in the forecast causes flight delay ripples through their whole networks. I've never figured out why MSP, DTW, or even MDW can handle the winter just fine but ORD fails so badly.

The biggest single reason it seems that the others do better is simple volume. According to RITA stats,
MDW is 24th in pax
DTW 14
MSP 12
ORD is 2

So there is a lot less tolerance for disruption at ORD than the others.

"Expansion" could also mean increased frequencies (in addition to SEA, LAX, etc). eg: ATL, DTW, LGA could all go to hourly, and SLC could go to every couple of hours, ignoring details like available slots at the other end, etc.