Why Chicago’s O’Hare Int’l Airport Has No Terminal 4

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Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) is the main international airport serving Chicago, Illinois. It began as an airfield serving a Douglas manufacturing plant for C-54 military transports during World War II. The airport was renamed Orchard Field Airport in the mid-1940s, which is how it got the IATA code ORD. It was re-named once again in 1949, after aviator Edward “Butch” O’Hare.

ORD began offering scheduled passenger service in 1955 and, from 1963 to 1998, was the world’s busiest airport (it’s currently the 4th busiest).

ORD has 4 terminals:

• Terminal 1 has 50 gates on two concourses, lettered B–C
• Terminal 2 has 41 gates on two concourses, lettered E–F
• Terminal 3 has 79 gates on four concourses, lettered G, H, K, and L
• Terminal 5 has 40 gates on one concourse, lettered M

Notice anything weird there? Yep, there’s no Terminal 4.

There actually once was a Terminal 4, back during the time that ORD was considered the busiest airport in the world.

Until 1985, ORD only had three terminals, appropriately named Terminals 1, 2 and 3. But the airport was quickly becoming more and more busy, particularly with international flights. So in 1985, the city decided to build a new terminal, Terminal 4, to help with congestion. To help ease the overcrowding as quickly as possible, they built what they labeled a temporary Terminal 4, to be used while they built a larger and better international terminal.

However, this temporary Terminal 4 was much too small for what was needed. So airport officials decided to open half of the new terminal (once it was built, of course) to help ease some of the congestion from of the temporary one. During the summer of 1993, international flights took off from the temporary international terminal but arrived into the finished half of the new one.

But, of course, the temporary/old and permanent/half/new buildings couldn’t both be Terminal 4. So, the new terminal was named Terminal 5.

When construction on the new building was finally complete and international flights could both take off from and arrive into the same building, the temporary “Terminal 4” shut down and the new one remained “Terminal 5” because every figured changing its name by them would be even more confusing.

The building dubbed Terminal 4 is still there – or a part of it is, anyway – it’s now home to the airport’s bus depot. You can see it across from the Hilton Hotel, attached to the short-term parking garage.

Oh, and the lack of Terminal D concourse? There used to be one. It was torn down to make way for the Terminal 1 gates. Whomp whomp. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

H/T: WBEZ/Chicago

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