United Airlines will be forced to scrap in excess of 200 departures and arrivals at Chicago O’Hare (ORD) during peak times this summer after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a final order imposing scheduling limits at the capacity-constrained airport for the busy summer travel period.
The decision came in response to the allegations that United Airlines was attempting a tactic known as ‘flooding the zone,’ in which an airline might operate flights unnecessarily to assert dominance at an airport and stifle competition from rival carriers.
United Airlines and American Airlines have been in direct competition with one another at Chicago O’Hare, with United attempting to limit American’s ability to expand its operation at ORD.
American started to neglect Chicago at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, due, in part, to regional pilot shortages and aircraft delivery delays, but now wants to grow its schedule at O’Hare.
However, gate allocation at O’Hare is based on how many flights an airline operates in the previous year. In order to prevent American Airlines from expanding its presence at O’Hare any further, United has been accused of ‘dumping’ capacity into its summer schedule “with the hopes of preventing American from gaining the gates.”
The size of United’s planned operation out of O’Hare this summer drew the attention of the FAA because it feared that, without action, travelers would be forced to endure months of severe delays as the airport attempted to cope with all of the additional flights that were being planned.
According to the FAA, as many as 3,080 flights were scheduled on peak days in summer – a 14.9% peak-day increase over summer 2025, which was marked by “long taxi times, extensive tarmac delays, missed customer connections, disrupted crew sequences and cascading disruptions across the system.”
The FAA convened a series of meetings with the big airlines operating out of O’Hare, and on Thursday, the agency announced that it was limiting daily flight movements at the airport to 2,708.
The schedule reduction program is set to kick in on May 17 and will end on October 24.
AA on the ORD thing pic.twitter.com/vlF7uYyct2
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) April 17, 2026
According to an internal American Airlines memo shared by aviation insider JonNYC on X, the carrier has assessed that United will be forced to cut in excess of 200 flight movements at O’Hare during peak periods. Meanwhile, American Airlines is cutting just 40 flight movements.
“For many reasons, this is a good result for our customers, our team, and the city of Chicago,” wrote American’s chief operating officer, David Seymour.
Seymour says that the schedule reduction program “resets the total level of operations to a manageable level. That should mean improved on-time performance, fewer departure peaks, and shorter taxi times.”
United had wanted to increase its flying schedule by as much as 34% year on year – an additional 130 flights per day, pushing O’Hare to what could have been a breaking point.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said that he “appreciated” the airlines working together to reach a “responsible level of operations that strengthens safety and delivers a more reliable travel experience for the American public.”
