Some progress has been made. In 2022 the redevelopment plans got federal environmental approval to move forward. A renovation and expansion of Terminal 5, included in the original airport overhaul plans, made room for Delta to move in, vacating its space in Terminal 2 before construction began.

But the major work to rebuild Terminal 2 as the Global Terminal and add the satellite concourses has yet to take off.

Earlier this month, the city proposed changing the sequencing of construction, opting to “accelerate the completion of the Global Terminal,” Chief Operating Officer John Roberson said. Initially, the two satellite concourses were to be built first, which would have added gate space for airlines to use while Terminal 2 was rebuilt. Now, if the budget is maxed out building the first concourse and the Global Terminal, some warn the second satellite could be in danger.

A change in the order of construction had been sought by airlines, who wanted to ensure the new terminal wasn’t threatened by future budget issues after the two satellites were built.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has pushed for the project to proceed as originally planned, worrying that changing the order would mean the second satellite concourse could be indefinitely delayed or cut. In a letter earlier this month to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Durbin wrote that the bulk of new gate capacity at the airport was to come from the second satellite.

“It cannot be overstated that both Chicago and the Midwest’s economic success and connectivity are at stake in this decision — a decision in which USDOT and the FAA have a vested interest, considering O’Hare’s present success as a top asset within the national aviation system,” he wrote, urging Buttigieg to convene a meeting with the city, airlines and state congressional delegation on the project.

The city’s aviation department, in its statement, said moving the Global Terminal up in the construction order “prioritizes the ability for O’Hare’s hub airlines to co-locate with their airline alliance partners, allowing for shorter international connections, improved operations and a smoother passenger experience.”

The aviation department later said the plan put forward to airlines earlier this month focused on “near-term flexibility while preserving long-term growth.”

Airport costs

O’Hare is not the first airport to encounter budget overruns. For example, the same port authority that manages LaGuardia last year increased its funding authorization for work at John F. Kennedy International Airport by $1 billion, Bloomberg has reported.

But at O’Hare, United and American airlines, footing a large part of the construction bill, have pushed back against rising costs. An estimate they received last June put the project $1.5 billion over budget in 2018 dollars, they said.

They worry the overruns and delays will raise the cost of flying passengers through O’Hare enough that they will no longer want to use the airport as a hub.

Already, air traffic at O’Hare has changed. The Tribune reported last year that O’Hare’s recovery from the pandemic lagged the recovery nationwide.

And in a preliminary ranking issued this month of the busiest airports in the world, O’Hare ranked ninth for number of passengers in 2023, down from fourth in 2022 and sixth in 2019. Midwest airports in Denver and Dallas have leapfrogged over O’Hare since the onset of the pandemic in the ranking from Airports Council International.

The LaGuardia project significantly increased American Airlines’ costs at the airport, the carrier said, but the New York market is different than Chicago. LaGuardia serves mostly local passengers leaving from or arriving to New York, and the airport doesn’t compete with other connecting hubs like O’Hare does. The airlines feel they can absorb higher costs in New York, and there are few lower-cost airports nearby.

But O’Hare serves as a major hub for connecting passengers, and the airlines are more sensitive to the cost of flying customers through the airport – especially if a competitor can move passengers through a different Midwest hub for cheaper.

In 2022, the average cost to an airline per passenger at O’Hare was $25.98, largely on par with costs at LaGuardia and Los Angeles International Airport, according to information provided by the airlines. Other Midwest airports in Detroit and Minneapolis, which serve as hubs for rival Delta Air Lines, cost less than $10 per passenger.

Dallas Forth Worth International Airport, American Airlines’ major hub, cost just over $12 per passenger. Denver, a fast-growing hub for United, cost a little over $10 per passenger at that time.

Midway, Chicago’s smaller airport and a key hub for Southwest, cost almost $14 per passenger in 2022, according to the data.

The O’Hare construction project is, admittedly, complex, said Hani Mahmassani, director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center. Maintaining the flow of passengers in a congested airport during construction will always involve some pain, and setbacks are not unusual. Underestimating initial costs is also common to get approval, he said.

But an independent agency might be better equipped to handle a large-scale project than a city department, he said.

“I just don’t know how committed the (airlines are) going to be to seeing this one airport rise to the occasion,” he said, “Unless there is a local, strong commitment to see that happen.”

(Chicago Tribune’s Jake Sheridan contributed.)

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