O'Hare (Chicago, 2006)

United employees reported a stationary disc over the airport that shot up leaving a hole in the clouds.

Chicago O'Hare International Airport (IATA: ORD, ICAO: KORD, FAA LID: ORD) is the primary international airport serving Chicago, Illinois, United States, located on the city's Northwest Side, approximately 17 miles (27 km) northwest of downtown. The airport is operated by the Chicago Department of Aviation and covers 7,627 acres (11.92 sq mi; 30.87 km2). It is the airport with the most runways in the world, with eight. Designed to be the successor to Chicago's Midway International Airport, itself once nicknamed the "busiest square mile in the world", O'Hare began as an airfield serving a Douglas manufacturing plant for C-54 military transports during World War II. It was renamed Orchard Field Airport in the mid-1940s and assigned the IATA code ORD. In 1949, it was renamed after aviator Edward "Butch" O'Hare, the U.S. Navy's first Medal of Honor recipient during World War II. As the first major airport planned after World War II, O'Hare's innovative design pioneered concepts such as concourses, direct highway access to the terminal, jet bridges, and underground refueling systems. O'Hare became famous during the jet age, holding the distinction as the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic from 1963 to 1998. It still ranks as one of the busiest airports in the world, according to the Airports Council International rankings. In 2025, O'Hare had more than 857,000 aircraft movements, averaging 2,340 per day, the most of any airport in the world.