There is always a lot of downtime at an airport. I am the type of traveller that always arrives early, hence the downtime.

Sometimes I read or listen to music but I always try to do an airport sketch.

On my recent trip to the Windy City, I sketched the airplane that would be taking me there. In this case it was United Airlines largest plane in their fleet: the Boeing 777-222A. This plane has a capacity of 28 first class passengers and 336 economy. It’s cruising speed is 639 mph and we made the journey from SFO to ORD in about three and half hours.

I was told that you don’t mess around with Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. O’Hare is the fourth busiest airport in the world with 54 million passengers passing through in 2021. It had the moniker of the “busiest square mile in the world”.

So I headed out of Chicago for the 45 minute journey to O’Hare with plenty of time to spare. Even though it was a weekday morning, the security checkpoint lines took almost half and hour to navigate. There is a reason you don’t mess with O’Hare. It’s better to be early then to miss your flight.

I found a window seat at a pizza restaurant (deep dish of course), opened my sketchbook and started to sketch the gate and airplane before me.