Chicago O'Hare became a hub in 2009 after St. Louis was closed due to poor participation. We still needed a midwestern hub to keep within our mission of flights under 3 hours and several options were put to the members. O'Hare won the vote of our members to be that hub, primarily because of the good physical location for our cargo operations. Passengers use gates F1 - F12 at O'Hare as shown below. Cargo operations use the northeast cargo ramp north of runway 27L.