ORD's Billion-Dollar Mystery: Data Suggests Losses, But the Whole Story Isn’t Clear

An analysis of the claim that American Airlines loses about $1 billion annually at Chicago O’Hare finds that while ORD likely drains AA financially on operating metrics, the full profitability picture remains unclear because it also depends on loyalty revenue, cargo, and other costs; United appears to have higher margins, and no hub-level P&L is published, so the $1B figure can't be conclusively proven.