The most recent airline to hit the KRFD market is United. Northwest pulled out of Rockford and Hooters Air not to long ago. I thought it could be a profitable airport for people who don’t want to travel to KORD, KMDW, OR KMKE. Free parking, can’t go wrong. I live right in the middle between KRFD and KORD. I much rather fly out of KRFD because of the less hastle. The airport is nice too.
I live by the IGQ area and also heard recently that Northwest and Hooters pulled out. I also just found out, when i went to schedule a trip, that hooters no longer flys out of Gary, GYY, do you know why? Are they just hurting and cutting back on their flights?
i think it’s cut backs. They probably had a tuff time competing with KMDW and KORD. I wouldn’t want to drive to Gary from the NW Suburbs to catch a flight!
I understand you wouldnt want to drive that far, but i live by Lansing, IL which is real close to Gary and it was nice just like rockford is for you.
sure is cool to see some locals on here 
rockford here northside. united is only flyin to denver right? how long u think it last?
I’m not actually a Chicago area local, but I am in town till Friday. I live in southern Illinois, but am in town right now with my wife who is attending a nursing conference.
I paid a visit to MDW today, although in the post 9/11 world, you can’t see much. I stopped at a Burger King on Cicero Ave. near MDW and shot a few pictures of aircraft landing, but all but one of them are blurry.
KP
I base my air charter business at RFD and I had heard that Hooters was very unhappy that airport management allowed United to come in and compete.
it is good to see other locals on. What charter company at RFD? I work for Midwest Helicopters out of willowbrook. I actually talked to a friend today who said they left gary because other workers at the airport were being “rude” to the hooter ladies. Wonder how true that is.
KPryor, if you go to ORD you can get much better pictures. Me and some friends actually found a hill thats right by the fence line and over looks the airport, we bar-b-que and shoot pictures as they fly over our head. only got caught once so far.
rich
Where is this place you speak of? I’m going to ORD friday and usually when I spot I go the Target Store across the street from Allstate Areana.
What is the place called.
Thanks for the info, Rich. If the weather isn’t too lousy, I may try to go there tomorrow. I’ll be going home Friday afternoon, so tomorrow is really my only chance. I had nice weather today while at MDW, but it started raining and getting nasty later on, so tomorrow may not be too good.
KP
the hill is kinda an unspoken place and you will have to walk through some woods and brush area to get to it. I dont know street names to get there but i can give you a general idea and maybe you could pull it up on google maps. The hill over looks runway 9R. You will be looking right down the runway.
This is from where i go to school which is at Lewis University in romeoville, IL. Take I-55N to thorndale, thorndale all the way to a T intersection, then make a right, after the right you will parallel tracks on your left then you come to stop light and make a left over the tracks, from there you will make a left into a sub division (there should only be like two streets to enter the sub division). You will go to like the far back area of that sub division. Get out of the car and walk away from the houses and you will have an open field on your right and woods on your left, walk for a little while and find a path to walk up through the woods towards the runway. Just stay pointed towards the airport and keep walking up, you will have the best look out over O’Hare that you have ever seen.
Here is a pic i have taken from that hill
hope that helps, if not let me know and i will try and get better directions. Also make sure you bring a grill and cook out, just watch out for airport security as they patrol the fence line kinda close to the hill and may see the grill smoke (happened to us once, they just told us to leave)
Rich
I think it is important for everyone to realize that it is NOT United that is flying into Rockford, IL. It is Skywest, operating as a United Express carrier. If you try to find a United flight, you won’t find it. Rockford has a very checkered history of passenger flights. It is very difficult for them to compete with O"Hare, which has many flights going where the travelers want to go at the times they want to go. If you live in RFD and wish to fly to California, do you go to DEN and change planes for your flight to California, or do you drive one hour to ORD and fly non-stop? I think the non-stop usually wins, thus the airline in RFD has a hard time filling their seats, at a price that can make a profit.
Thanks for the info on this location. I got a bunch of great pictures there today. I got some by the Target sign at the main entrance, along with more down by Office Max and also in the Steak n Shake parking lot. I got some really good ones, including a BA 777.
The weather stayed decent too. Not beautiful, but not pouring rain either. Great day, overall.
KP
at a price that can make a profit. Every flight that leaves with an unfilled seat has lost the revenue from that seat forever. The incremental cost of flying an additional passenger is fuel (for the additional weight load), minimal costs for food service (that probably has been eliminated) and beverages, and a few bucks for staff services (ticketing, luggage, etc.).
United/Skywest could make their RFD flightsquite profitable by judiciously lowering fares out of RFD. A lot of people make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Austin becasue it’s cheaper to fly from AUS than from DFW. The round-trip fare from AUS to LAX is $59 less that the DFW/LAX fare. For a family of 4, that’s a $236 savings. For a lot of families, that’s the difference between flying and not going at all.
Perhaps United/Skywest ought to rethink how they price their product.
Northwest was providing flights to Detroit, but the service was so bad, I would hang out at the terminal and pick up passengers when Northwest would cancel and we would fly them over to Detroit. That has been a problem @ RFD also. But I agree that ORD is rockfords biggest problem with attracting and keeping air service.
KPryor,
The Pics you took, did you post them on airliners.net?
I would like to see how they turned out!
I just got home (11:00 pm) and my camera batteries are run down (and so am I )
I had fantastic weather today and took over 40 shots, in addition to the over 30 from yesterday at ORD. Got really lucky today, I got a UA 747, a British Airways 777 and lots of other great ones.
Since my batteries are dead (and so are the camera’s 
) I’ll have to wait and post some somewhere tomorrow when I’m able to transfer the pics off the camera into my computer. I’ll post a link to them.
I probably don’t take airliners.net quality photos, so I’ll just post them for whoever wants to see them in my own webspace. I’ll go through them, though, and see if any are worthy of submission to one of the aircraft photo sites.
Thanks again for suggesting the Target store. It was a perfect location!
KP
Since my batteries are dead (and so are the camera’s Wink ) I’ll have to wait and post some somewhere tomorrow when I’m able to transfer the pics off the camera into my computer.
Best thing I did was get a card reader. The one I have reads Sony memory sticks and SD’s and 3-4 other type of cards. It cost about $20. It even seems to transfer the pictures faster.
Yea, I plan to get a card reader one of these days, just haven’t ever got around to it. I work part-time in a computer store here on my days off from my full-time job and I’m pretty sure we have card readers in stock, so I guess I oughta get one.
KP
Here’s a link to all the shots I took this week that I’ve had time to edit and upload. http://thedisposal.com/cpg133/thumbnails.php?album=5
KP