Chicago Spotting

[Matt Molnar]

Heading to Chicago next weekend and I'll have some free time for spotting/shooting. Anyone know some good spots at ORD or MDW? Are they accessible by public transport?

[nikon50bigma]

I was at MDW a couple years ago on an ATA flight.
From what I remember there are some spots near the food courts which over see the SWA ramp area. The windows weren't that bad at the time.

[SengaB]

I lived in Chicago for 6 years. Chicago spotting is like Newark spotting on Steroids :)
96-01
Chicag Pix
http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?aircraft=-2&airline=-2&country=-2&photog=625&category=-2&year=-2&keywordrange=airport&keywordlimiter=2&keywords=chicago&sort=1&genre=1&size=-2&mainsearch=search&displaymode=1&display=90

I had my FIRST and WORST ever cop/photography experience in Chicago. It happened in 1996. At MDW you can simply just walk around the sidewalks that run along the perimiter fence. I don't know if this is such a good thing to do now though. When I was there it was a fantastic experience.
Senga

[T-Bird76]

Chicago is tuff Matt, I had no problems inside MDW taking pics but outside you may encounter some issues. ORD is a pain in the ass, first off there are no good spots and second the cops don't like you there. ORD doesn't have the best traffic anyway so you won't be missing much anyway.

[SmAlbany]

I tried to do ORD via public transport in 2006 with not so great results. I did a search on the a.net forums and got a few pointers from there. I first took the subway to the terminal and got no satisfaction. No great places that I could find without going through security. I took the subway back toward downtown one stop. There is a convention center and a couple other commercial buildings that had large, empty parking garages on the airport side of them.

The garages would have been good places except for wrong runway configuration that day. This spot is in line with 9/27. They were taking off on 9L and the departures were flying right over me. Lots of belly shots. If they had been using 27 approaches this would have been a good spot I think.

I was there for a couple of hours and did not see any other people - much less any hassles from police. Of course, this was my only time there.

Good luck!
Dan

[JZ1]

I suppose you don't fly in/out of ORD, because inside the terminal you can get decent shots. However, ORD has too many runways and it's hard to predict which runway your favorite planes will come/go. If you can live with generic UA/AA RJs, MD-80s, 737s and 320s, then it's OK. Otherwise it's a hard catch, even within the terminals.

[lear45]

http://www.contrailsphotography.com/spottingord.html

I have not shot at ORD in a long time but the spots mentioned here are the ones I have been to.

[Matt Molnar]

Thanks for your help, guys. I'm flying into and out of MDW so I can't get into the inner ORD spots but I might try to get a couple of the outside ones.

As for their easily excited law enforcement, when you think about what they did to Meigs Field it's not hard to imagine where that comes from.