WORLD ROUTES: A ‘Rosie’ Welcome to Chicago for World Routes

This year’s World Routes is set to be the biggest and the best ever, according to Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino, who has worked tirelessly with her team and partners over the past four years to bring the event to the USA for only the second time.

“My first ever experience of World Routes provided me with the most valuable business to business meetings I had ever had. After that it was not simply a case of having to attend the event. We wanted to host it, so I am absolutely delighted that here we are now preparing to showcase our airport, city and region to a host of world’s airline leaders,” she explained to The HUB after an official press conference to launch the forum.

The Chicago Department of Aviation describe their airport system – O’Hare and Midway airports – as a global leader in aviation and have invested heavily in upgrading and modernising infrastructure throughout, included a modernised international Terminal and Runway construction and extension projects at O’Hare. And there is still more to come as another Runway comes online and preparations continue to enable O’Hare to handle Airbus A380 operations.

“We are currently designing two new gateways that will be able to support A380 operations. We already have a number of tenants that operate the aircraft and know there is tremendous interest from them to deploy them in the Chicago market,” said Andolino.

The HUB spent some time with the Commissioner after the conference to record this following message on why the Chicago Department of Aviation was so eager to host World Routes and what it means to host “the world’s most prestigious aviation event”.

Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino highlights why hosting World Routes 2014 was a must for Chicago's Department of Aviation.
Richard Maslen

Richard Maslen has travelled across the globe to report on developments in the aviation sector as airlines and airports have continued to evolve and…