American Airlines Does Not Hold Back on 'Reckless' United Airlines

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced plans to cap the total daily operations at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, and American Airlines is blaming United for it.

The decision from the FAA comes as American Airlines and United Airlines have been running up their schedules in an effort to preserve gate access at the airport. Now, American is calling out United for its "reckless" scheduing.

American and United Compete for Gates

Over the past several years, American and United have been fighting for gates at the airport as they jockey for superiority at the Chicago hub.

Back in 2018, airlines agreed to a new way to allocate gates at the Chicago airport under a use-it-or-lose-it formula. According to The Points Guy, the formula resulted in American losing five gates and United gaining a roughly equal number when the changes took effect in October 2025 after a COVID-era suspension.

This year, American is expected to gain as many as three gates back from United, but United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline was drawing a "line in the sand" and would do whatever it could to prevent American from taking any more gates in the future.

"We're not going to allow them to win a single gate at our expense in 2026," he said back in January. "We're going to add as many flights as are required to make sure that we keep our gate count the same in Chicago. We're just going to stay focused."

United seemingly followed through on this promise by matching and one-upping American's 2026 summer schedule. Obviously, this sparked frustration from American Airlines.

"This is not meaningful growth — it is a ploy to overschedule the airport to manipulate a provision which was meant to promote competition, seemingly without regard for ORD customers, team members or partners," David Seymour, chief operating officer of American, and Nathaniel Pieper, chief commercial officer of American, told staff in a memo Tuesday via The Points Guy.

"United's reactive overcapacity is meant to undermine ORD's status as a dual hub," they added.

O'Hare Caps Operations

On Tuesday, the FAA announced that it plans to cap total daily operations at the airport in order to avoid severe "delays, cancellations, and inconvenience to the traveling public."

The FAA cited schedules that exceed the total daily runway capacity of ORD. Currently, daily operations during the peak summer season are expected to exceed 3,080 takeoffs and landings on peak days, up from 2,680 last summer. That is far above capacity, the FAA says.

The agency said it is proposing to cap total operations per day at 2,800 to address “severe congestion” and “reduce over-scheduling, flight delays and cancellations.”

American Calls Out United

Obviously, this decision is frustrating for both United and American Airlines, which dominate O'Hare's traffic. However, American seemingly blames United for the issues.

In a letter sent to its Chicago employees on Tuesday, American Airlines executives did not hold back on United Airlines as it called out its "reckless" sceduling that it said would lead to issues at the airport without intervention.

“Without intervention, United’s reckless scheduling will lead to challenging conditions at ORD this summer: long taxi times, extensive tarmac delays, missed customer connections, disrupted crew sequences and cascading disruptions across the system,” American Airlines executives said in the letter, via Bloomberg.

Needless to say, it sounds like American is quite a bit frustrated with United's aggressive tactics.