United’s assault on O’Hare continued this week with an additional 30 daily departures for summer
The biggest winner of the group is probably Lancaster (PA)… because it’s subsidized Essential Air Service so it has the best chance of making money
Most of the other increases are in smaller regional markets with about half on 50-seaters (mostly CRJ-550)
Most of the rest were on Embraer 175s, but there was some growth on B737s as well
We broke this down to show how each market from O’Hare has changed for United YoY, and the results are striking
Only 25% of markets are flat or down YoY with the rest of them seeing growth, but keep in mind this is the whole network and most of the flat markets are international
If we look at domestic-only, only 15% of markets are flat or down while nearly half of all markets see an increase of at least 100 seats per day
There are a lot of ways to slice and dice this expansion, but it is a massive increase no matter how you look at it
