General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Protesters Plan to Shut Down Chicago's O'Hare Airport on Labor Day [View all]Pope George Ringo II
(1,896 posts)If it affects flight ops at all, it's going to be because flight crews will have trouble getting to/from hotels, or some ground crew will be delayed getting to work. It's a little late in the day to really impact flight crews, though. An outright majority of the people impacted will live elsewhere and be traveling elsewhere, but are just changing planes at ORD. Half the rest don't live there and are flying home from the ORD area. Since this a Chicago issue rather than an Illinois issue, that limits the relevance of the people impacted even further. The people with status at United will try to change flights to connect through IAH or EWR or whatever, and the people without status will just decide to fly AA and connect through DFW or CLT or whatever next time.
The vast majority of what it's going to do is annoy people who don't even live anywhere near Chicago. They're not going to be annoyed with the mayor, they're going to be annoyed with the people. That doesn't help the city as a whole.
UA has predictably been trying to minimize the impact, and they'll probably succeed. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/1928584-possible-disruptions-driving-chicago-o-hare-monday.html