If you are a resident of Chicago, what would make you pick AA over UA? As a former resident of Chicago, I rarely considered AA for my travel needs. They have fewer flights, fewer destinations, a higher percentage of regional equipment, and they are less crucial to the local economy in Chicago. That last point goes both ways, as AA’s relationship with its ORD hub has been less stable than UA’s. But is this view short-sighted? Does AA differentiate itself enough to be a strong competitor in the Chicago market? Truthfully, the answer is both yes and no.
Why would a Chicago flyer choose AA?
The biggest issue AA has at ORD is its lack of a stable schedule. Their route network at ORD has risen and fallen more drastically relative to their other hubs. In the graph below, we can see that the post-pandemic years were unstable for AA’s ORD hub.
AA has put more resources into its other hubs during this time period, allowing its other hubs to have a more stable offering year to year. There were personalities and strategies involved regarding corporate travel in the post-pandemic world. AA bet heavily that corporate travel would not be a driving force in the future, and as such, hubs like ORD could be minimized in favor of Dallas (DFW) and Charlotte (CLT). This ended up being a poor bet on AA’s part, and their ORD hub paid the price for some of this.
This is in contrast to UA’s hub at ORD, which has had continuous growth in both seat count and destination count in this same time period.
The difference is more stark with international destinations
American had 1,071,507 international seats offered between May 2024 and May 2025. By contrast, United offered 2,579,749. When factoring in American’s joint venture partner airlines, it would add 443,642 seats in the same time period. United’s would add 1,001,537 seats if JV partners were factored in.
How does AA fit into Chicago? What role does it play in the market?
Looking at the data above, it might be hard to see where AA fits into the mix. However, Chicago is a massive market. ORD is the 4th largest origin and destination (O&D) airport in the US, with around 65,117 passengers daily each way (PDEW). Even if we subtract the 26,373 United has at ORD, that is only 40.5% of the market share. That is a very large sum for such a large market, but it also means that there is room for more than one airline to be a significant player in the Chicago market.
AA is, more than likely, not going to cover the Chicago market the way UA does. Still, that might not matter depending on the type of traveler.
Domestically, AA provides a comparable offering to UA at ORD.
American offers service to 104 domestic destinations from ORD multiple times a week on a year-round basis, while United serves 133. The gap may seem large, but the main difference between the two is the number of cities UA serves in the Mountain West and the West Coast. AA still serves the major O&D markets from ORD in those regions. UA and AA also have very similar load factors in their domestic networks (between 84-85%). Of Chicago’s top 90 domestic O&D destinations, there are only two that AA does not serve from ORD (DAL and SJC), and only one that UA does not serve (DAL). ORD’s top 90 domestic destinations account for 87.9% of its total domestic O&D.
Internationally, what AA offers at ORD is paltry relative to UA, but AA has carved out a niche market in the Summer season.
With its joint ventures with British Airways (BA) and Iberia (IB), AA does carry more traffic between ORD and the United Kingdom and Spain. AA also carries more traffic between ORD and Greece. However, that is where AA’s dominance in ORD’s international market ends. As shown in the graphs in this article, UA not only serves a larger number of international destinations from ORD but also carries many more passengers on international routes from ORD compared to AA.
However, AA is capitalizing on its hub at ORD in a unique way: summer seasonal flights to European destinations. While AA only flies to one destination in Europe year-round from ORD, it flies to a total of eight in the summer. While data for 2025 is not available at the time of writing this article, we can refer to data from 2024.
We can see from the data that only Paris (CDG) has an O&D disadvantage relative to AA on these routes. I would chalk this up to there being a business component to ORD-CDG and UA flying the route year-round.
What is reassuring for AA is that it is keeping up with UA on its summer-seasonal portfolio from ORD. This shows there is definitely a niche for AA to fill during the summer at ORD.
It does bear saying that this is not going to appeal to an ORD business traveler who travels frequently internationally outside London (LHR) or perhaps Madrid (MAD) and Tokyo (TYO) via their JV partners, and even then, UA offers options to LHR and TYO. United simply offers much more for the international business traveler at ORD.
So, what is the profile of an AA frequent flyer at ORD?
- Domestic heavy travel patterns. More so than an average traveler.
- Those who take vacations to Europe in the summer, but might not otherwise travel long-haul internationally.
- Those who travel to cities where AA has a partner airline with a hub, such as Hong Kong or Madrid.
- Those who travel frequently not only to AA hubs but also to stations where AA is significantly larger than UA (AUS, STL, RDU, etc).
The above, of course, is an overgeneralization. Not all AA travelers based in Chicago will have travel patterns such as these. However, many AA travelers in Chicago will probably have at least one or two of these characteristics. AA is perhaps not the preferred choice for the Chicago-based business traveler who flies overseas frequently, but they have clearly carved out a nice niche for themselves in the market as a whole.