ORD Terminal 2 (Chicago, Illinois)

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  DaveKilo (guest)

  Terminals 2 and 3 were completed in the 1962 terminal expansion, which allowed almost all Chicago domestic flights to move from Midway Airport to O'Hare. Terminal 2 originally had Concourses D, E and F, with 29 gates that primarily served the airlines United, Northwest, Eastern, Continental, Braniff and Ozark. The "Y" shaped E/F concourse structure originally had a public observation deck on its central roof. The 1962 building had a single-level frontage roadway. An upper-level departure frontage roadway was added in the late 1960s. Until the first phase of the new Terminal 1 opened in 1989, Terminal 2 was the primary hub for United Airlines, which controlled virtually all gates on Concourses E & F. The terminal is now directly managed by the City of Chicago and a consortium of user airlines headed by Delta (formerly Northwest). The former Concourse D was a single finger that lay between the Terminal 2 "Y" structure and the now-demolished old Terminal 1 "Y" structure. The finger concourse was removed in 1989-90 to allow completion of the current Terminal 1. Concourse D also housed the original 1955 FAA control tower, which was taken over as the "City Tower" (for International Ramp Control) around 1970 when a new control tower near the Hilton Hotel opened. The original 1955 ORD master plan showed the first tower as the center structure in a smaller "Y" that would have been identical to the one that was part of the original Terminal 1. In 2009 a major expansion of the T2 landside section is well underway, deepening it toward its frontage roadways and filling in space toward both T1 and T3.

  15 years ago | reply | hide comment