To Natalia Grob, 9, her flight from Warsaw to Chicago on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 001 was “great” and O’Hare Airport’s gleaming new International Terminal 5 “really neat.” But what brought the biggest smile to the Des Plaines girl’s face was the hugging and kissing reunion she had-just minutes after her arrival-with her mother, Bronia, her father, Marek, and her older brother, Jacek, in the terminal’s meeters-greeters lobby.
As for Joe and Brigitte McClure and their children, Stephanie and Nicholas, Terminal 5, they all agreed, was “beautiful and clean” and the service “nice.” Arriving from Berlin on American Airlines Flight 23, they had, in 20 minutes, cleared U.S. Immigration, retrieved their luggage, zipped through customs, rechecked their bags and were on their way to connect with a flight to Omaha, their home.
For international travelers like young Grob and the McClures, and for the more than 7,000 other passengers who arrived at O’Hare on a Thursday in August, the three-level, 1.2-million-square-foot, $618-million Terminal 5 fully served its purpose. Some critics might question its outside appearance-a long elliptical core with two long concourses extending to the east and northwest-but few can quibble with its interior function. The sleek structure, a palatial vision in white-laminate walls, gray, blue and white terrazzo floors and carpeted corridors, gets arriving-and departing-passengers in and out with minimal pain and strain-which is what it was designed to do.
Efficiency, of course, requires ample gates for the big jets that arrive here from 63 cities all over the world, well-manned areas for federal inspection services involving five agencies, sophisticated baggage-handling equipment, facilities for airlines to provide connecting-flight assistance and ready access to the new automated Airport Transit System (ATS) for quick transport to O’Hare’s domestic terminals.
Numbers best tell the story of Terminal 5’s size and capacity: 21 aircraft gates in use by 32 carriers, 68 federal inspection booths that can handle 4,000 passengers an hour, 800 free baggage carts, nine baggage carousels (plus two more for oversize pieces), 48 check-in counters for domestic connections, 11 moving walkways, 27 escalators, 14 elevators, 156 ticketing positions for departing passengers and short-term parking for 600 cars.
Because it opened just recently-May 27 for arrivals and Sept. 30 for departures-it’s too early to issue a meaningful grade for the airy steel-and-glass Terminal 5 that is still fine-tuning its operations. But the initial report can only be described as a definite thumbs-up.
“My early reaction is that the meeters-greeters lobby is not big enough,” says David R. Mosena, Chicago’s aviation commissioner. “But we think that through better management, that will work itself out.”
Mosena says that for seasoned travelers who know where they are going, the new terminal is quite efficient. “So we’re trying to focus most of our attention on people who are changing planes here,” he says. “Their impression of Chicago is to some extent determined by how they are handled at the airport. The harder we make it for them, the worse impression they have of the city. We want those people to have an easy transfer.
“But compared to the old days of getting off a plane, on to a bus to go to Terminal 4, then out of that terminal, then into the garage and across the roadway and into Terminal 3 . . . .” Mosena makes his point.
As for the terminal’s design, Mosena says, “Because the site is sandwiched between the airport’s roadway and the runways, we had to string it out.”
What’s most noteworthy though, is that for the first time in its aviation history, Chicago finally has an excellent international terminal, the largest in the U.S. at that. Back when tiny Midway reigned as Chicago’s-and the world’s busiest-airport (and when a “foreign” flight usually meant just Mexico), U.S. Immigration and Customs facilities there were simply abysmal. Federal inspection services improved slightly when O’Hare International Airport opened in 1963 and launched Chicago into the Jet Age. International arrivals and departures used the old, leaky Terminal 1, which stood on the site now occupied by the United Airlines Terminal for Tomorrow.
Terminal 4 then became O’Hare’s port of entry, giving all incoming and most outgoing passengers a taste of how a parking garage could creatively but inadequately serve as an international gateway for one of the world’s great cities. (With the inauguration of Terminal 5, Terminal 4 can revert to being a garage or yet another airport service facility.)
For anyone who arrives at an international airport no matter where, the overriding wish is to get through entry formalities as quickly as possible. These passengers also want access to restrooms, travel information, currency-exchange facilities and ground transportation, but with few exceptions, people arriving from overseas don’t want to linger-even in a classy terminal such as O’Hare’s that cost $618 million and displays original art work.
After exiting the plane via loading bridges, passengers walk down carpeted, gently sloping ramps into the main sterile (secure) corridor. For those who disembark at the most distant (M21) of the superlong terminal’s 21 gates, the walk to U.S. Immigration and Customs is the length of five football fields, but 540 feet are covered by three moving walkways. (Of Terminal 5’s 21 gates, eight are 230 to 650 feet from immigration, seven are 650 to 1,250 feet and six are 1,250 to 1,640 feet.)
The gray-carpeted, white-walled corridor has both natural and (subdued) fluorescent lighting. The moving walkways hasten passengers along. So do courtesy electric carts, provided by the airlines to assist seniors and families with infants. Wheelchair service also is available.
Elevators, escalators and stairs provide access to a lower-level three-story rotunda furnished with chairs for older passengers and others who may need to pause a bit on their way to the immigration and customs hall.
A multilingual red-jacketed visitor information representative wearing a big button that says “Ask me” assists passengers as they arrive at the rotunda. (The city’s 26 reps speak some 28 different languages among them.) One rep kindly suggests that older travelers sit and wait for an electric-cart ride to the immigration lanes.
It is at the rotunda where first-time visitors get their initial views of the city. Two panels with 36 poster-size backlit transparencies highlight Chicago’s architecture, sports, arts, skyline, neighborhoods and other city facets along with portraits of Mayor Daley and Michael Jordan.
The corridors extending from the rotundas to the immigration and customs hall offer more views of Chicago: Twelve 4-by-9-foot colorful paintings, six in each of the two arrival wings, show the city as perceived by artists from Chicago’s 12 sister cities-Accra (Ghana), Casablanca (Morocco), Goteborg (Sweden), Kiev (Ukraine), Mexico City, Milan, Prague, Osaka, Shanghai and Shenyang (China), Toronto and Warsaw. The paintings range from abstract designs to a depiction of a couple in Grant Park. They carry such diverse titles as “LaSalle Street,” “Chicago: The Wind,” “Chicago Tapestry,” “Black and White Movement Amid Stillness” and “Cindy Crawford and the Moon.”
As throngs of passengers move through the corridor, only a handful might glance at the terminal’s niceties. Instead their attention is focused mainly on completing the last stage of their trip. They are anxious to get through entry formalities, make connecting flights (which 55 percent of the passengers do) and either get to the meeters-greeters lobby for a welcome by loved ones or go right out to grab a cab.
