Agency cites airport improvements for lifting cap

The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted the four-year-old ceiling on flight operations at Chicago O’Hare – a restriction it had imposed to stem growing problems of congestion and delays at the busy airport. Why the change? Because O’Hare has been building new infrastructure that should let it accommodate more flights without delays. On September 25, the airport will complete an extension of its existing Runway 10, two months ahead of schedule. On November 20, the airport is due to open a new runway and a new north control tower. The new runway will permit four or five more arrivals per hour, or 56 to 70 additional flights per day, the FAA said, adding that airlines have only requested 43 more arrivals for their winter schedules. The agency noted that it has also boosted efficiency of the airspace at O’Hare by giving outbound aircraft five southward departure tracks, up from three previously. “Since then, we’ve seen on-time departures improve 10 percent,” said an FAA official. However, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that United and American – which together control 80 percent of O’Hare’s traffic – together with other incumbent airlines there have asked the FAA to suspend a rule that could redistribute to other carriers any assigned takeoff and landing slots that go unused. Both airlines have announced plans for significant schedule cutbacks this fall. The publication suggested that if approved, “such moves would help both carriers maintain their stranglehold at O’Hare…and hold off efforts by Virgin America to enter the Chicago market.” Low-cost Virgin America recently announced its intention to start flying out of O’Hare this fall with two daily roundtrips in the ORD-LAX and ORD-San Francisco markets – both of them plum routes for United and American.