O'Hare on pace to take back 'world's busiest airport' title

ORD, ATL, and DFW are very different animals - ATL is designed with connecting traffic in mind while DFW was originally designed with the "car to plane" concept and little thought to transfer passengers. O'Hare is a somewhat earlier design that's been retrofitted over the years and that the OMP work is now further modifying.

O'Hare is pretty capable of moving quite a lot of people, though. Not to mention that unlike Atlanta or Dallas, O'Hare has two airline hub operations rather than just one is also a mark in its favor because the airport maintains pretty good efficiency in operations despite the added complexity of its operations.

You really can avoid O'Hare. I flew every week for ten years - including clients in Illinois, and successfully avoided O'Hare. Of course, it helped that I rarely flew American or United.

I cannot imagine anyone outside of the South Side feels Gary is convenient (or safe for that matter).

We are finally getting local air service again, this time direct to ORD instead of MSP. Exciting to me since I would rather connect to an airport with 60+ airlines instead of one that has only 5.

Safe is dangerous and dangerous is safe. If a pilot thinks that O'Hare "seems" dangerous, that's a good thing, because they'll act accordingly. This is just like how people will feel safe going 50 on some of those wide suburban arterial roads even if the posted speed limit is 25 - the road "feels" safe at 50. Conversely, "dangerous" road intersections often cause people to slow down and think, making them much safer precisely because of the appearance of danger. The "safe" airports like DFW and ATL are actually insidiously dangerous because controllers and pilots are more likely to be careless.