Chicago’s airports have again ranked below average in an annual customer satisfaction survey released by JD Power.
JD Power says its 2026 customer satisfaction report on North American airports, released Wednesday, is based on more than 24,000 survey responses. Air travelers were asked to evaluate airports based on their ease of travel through the airport, terminal facilities, food and retail offerings and level of “trust” in the airport, among other metrics.
This year, O’Hare International Airport is tied for last place in the “mega” airports category, which is for airports that see 33 million or more passengers per year. It shares the bottom spot with Newark Liberty International in New Jersey.
That’s a bit of a drop from last year, when O’Hare — one of the busiest airports in the world — was still below average but ranked 16th out of 20 airports in its category.
Michael Taylor, JD Power’s practice lead for travel, said O’Hare’s biggest problem is construction. The city last year broke ground on an $8.8 billion modernization and terminal expansion project at O’Hare that promises to eventually reshape the airport and add gates.
But in its current form, Taylor said, the airport — one of the busiest in the world — is “definitely not as big as it needs to be.” O’Hare last year saw the most aircraft movements of any airport in the world, according to data from the Airports Council International. It’s among the top airports in the world by passenger traffic, too.
During busy periods, “it’s like Mardi Gras” inside O’Hare, Taylor said.
O’Hare’s new 19-gate “Concourse D,” which is one part of the terminal expansion project, is expected to wrap up in late 2028.
The city said construction on a second new concourse is expected to start later this year, adding more than a dozen new gates to the airport in 2030. The centerpiece of the modernization project, the Jeanne Gang-designed Global Terminal, will be nearly double the size of the airport’s Terminal 2, which it’s slated to replace. The Global Terminal is slated for completion in 2033, with the whole modernization project expected to be done in 2034.
“From the renderings I’ve seen, it will make O’Hare look completely different, and probably feel completely different,” Taylor said.
Notably, JD Power said that the highest-ranking airports in its survey have recently completed or are close to completing large capital improvement projects.
“JD Power is one of several national measures of the passenger experience, and we take that feedback seriously as we continue working to improve the experience at both O’Hare and Midway,” Chicago Department of Aviation spokesperson Kevin Bargnes said in an email to the Tribune.
He noted that O’Hare last year was named “Best Airport in North America” by the readers of Global Traveler and that Midway was named “Best Family-Friendly Domestic Airport” by the Wherever Awards.
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Bargnes said the city “know[s] there is more work to do” but is “making historic investments at both airports to deliver a substantially better passenger experience.” He pointed to the big O’Hare modernization project as well as to other initiatives at both airports, including a $400 million modernization project at Midway that wrapped up in 2023.
At O’Hare, Bargnes pointed to the city’s $1.3 billion Terminal 5 expansion and modernization project as well as an ongoing $300 million project in the airport’s Terminal 3 that is expected to wrap up next year. The T3 project, he said, is intended to improve security screening, accessibility and concessions space, amongst other goals.
Midway also falls below average in the JD Power survey, ranking 17th out of 24 airports in the “large” category, which is for airports that see between 10 million and 33 million passengers each year.
Last year, Midway ranked 19th out of 27 airports in the category, an improvement over its 2024 results.
“Midway has had a lot of improvement over the years,” Taylor said. One bright spot, he said: It’s a relatively easy airport for passengers to get out of once they land. And, he said, more than half of respondents say they’d recommend Midway to a friend.
“I think they recommend it because the other alternative’s O’Hare,” he said.
The top spots this year were taken by Minneapolis-Saint Paul International and Tampa International in the mega and large categories, respectively.