Chicago Weekend Fun!

Cheap Flights to Chicago (ORD) can be found! Its vacation season and a lot of my friends are visiting Chicago from out of town and taking the cheapest flights possible. (southwest including layovers) I also have a lot of colleagues flying into Chicago for work and business meetings this month. (They take the faster direct nonstop flights that aren’t so cheap.) It seems that I am driving to O’Hare Airport to pick someone up or drop someone off at least once a week.  

O’Hare International Airport used to be known as the busiest airport in the world (2005), by takeoffs and landings but that title now belongs to Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta (2007).  In 2006 O’Hare had 972,246 aircraft operations, an average of 2,663 per day. (whather an aircraft operation is a flight landing or takeoff I am not sure) There is a planned $6 Billion dollar O’Hare expansion project that Mayor Daley has been pushing for the past 10 years that will add 4 runways and modernize and expand the airport. This may bring the World’s Busiest Airport title back to Chicago, but it’s not something we feel bad about having lost. O’Hare airport is a major source of pollution in Chicago and in the early 1990’s Mayor Daley forced the FAA to change flightpaths on takeoffs so that the flights stayed low until they were over the southwestern suburbs and the accelleration exhaust for gaining altitude was deposited there rather than over the City. No one really knew about this, but after that change DuPage County’s air quality rating from the Ameican Lung Association went from an A to a C. So, expansion of O’Hare Airport is really only benefiting the airlines, the city (form fees) and big businesses who do the construction and management. The people don’t want to expand the airport just for more cheap flights, but we don’t really have a say in the matter either.

United Airlines is the airline I buy flights from when I travel. They are not necessarily the cheapest flights that you can find, but I think the flying experience is the best on United. I have taken flights on the cheapest airlines like Southwest and been very dissapointed by the cattle herding experience. United always has your seat reserved, they always have TV’s in flight with a movie and you can always purchase food if you are desperate for something to eat on a 4 hour flight to LA or Portland. The Business Class Seats on the Flights are even better with more room than the typical cheap coach seats. It is only $40.00 dollars to upgrade at the gate so I usually take that option. It is far cheaper than buying a business class ticket online directly. Those can be hundreds more. So many people take the cheaper route and just pay for the cheap coach ticket and then the extra $40.00 to upgrade at check in when those seats never sell out. 

Chicago Flights seem to be available everywhere these days. There are so many ways to buy a ticket for a flight to Chicago online. First there are the Airline web sites themselves.  Unitesd, Southwest, American, Delta and Northwest all have online search and booking available at their web sites. You may or may not find the best price there, and you can’t compare it easily to any other airline. Then there are cheap flight finding flight search engines like Orbitz.com and Travelocity.com. I have used these flight search sites in the past and I like them because you get to compare all the airlines to and from O’Hare Airport and see which one meets your time and cost needs. What I really like is that recently they have added a date range feature where they allow you to see how much the ticket would cost a few days before and after your flight date. So, if you are not traveling for a specific event date you can take the cheapest day and change your plans slightly to save $20-50 bucks. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are low travel days and you will find the prices are cheaper on those days.

Sidestep.com is a new flight search engine with even more detailed information from multiple sources (600). This site seems to have even lower prices on cheap flights. Right now a 7 day trip from Chicago to NYC Laguardia and back to O’Hare Airport is listed at $179 on Sidestep by ATA and $199 on Sidestep by Jet Blue. Whether or not you want to fly cheap airlines like ATA and JetBlue or not is up to you, but there is more affordable airfare now than there has ever been before.

Farecast.com is an even more cutting edge way to search for cheap flights. Farecast looks at all the past market trend data on ticket prices, fuel costs and seasonality and then trend whether they think the ticket price will go up or down in the next 2 months. So, you can plan to buy your tickets when they are the cheapest. This only works for someone who plans travel 2-6 months in advance. This site really won’t help you if you need cheap tickets by next week. Ticket prices usually spike in the last 2 weeks before a flight, because airlines know people are in a tough spot and need to get somewhere on that specific date, and for lack of planning they may pay 2-3 times more than someone who buys a cheaper ticket months in advance. Tickets bought a day before may be thousands of dollars and make a handsome profit for airlines. Right now on Farecast it lists a flight from Chicago to LaGuardia round trip as time to buy, because low fares are holding steady. It lists the cost range at $179-$200 and list the same ATA flights that we saw on Sidestep. So, in this case it didn’t provide any new fare information.

Once you’re in O’Hare there is a lot of navigating to do and the airport is somewhat clearly labeled so you can find your way to your terminal or your bags. There are 3 levels to the airport. The basement level for moving between terminals, the ground level for drop offs and pickups and bagage claim and the top level for departures. There are escalators that can be tricky to find that connect all three levels. And there are Starbucks everywhere! I think the United Terminal is the nicest, but then again it’s the newest. I don’t like to fly American Airlines because they have a terminal that takes a 15 minute walk from the parking garage and it’s under construction so it’s a noisy mess right now. Plus I always just feel that American is just a Cheaper airline in general.

Also, a key travel tip, on Mondays and Tuesdays if you have a flight out of O’Hare, get there early! The parking garages all sell out by 10 am, and they route you to the cheaper but far away parking lots and you have to take a bus back to the terminal. This adds about 30 minutes to your time getting to the terminal. If you’re running late it can make you miss your flight. So arrive as early as possible on Monday or Tuesday Mornings or just take a limo or cab. The costs from downtown to the airport is around $60 bucks either way. You pay $50.00 a day to park in the parking garage at O’Hare if it is not already filled, and $25.00 a day for the cheap far parking lots. So, getting a friend to pick up or drop you off is always the best way to go!

Whichever way you choose to fly to Chicago, we’re happy you’re here and we welcome you to visit all the fun sights and events in Chicago.