O'Hare Runway Opening Today Means Fewer Delays But, For Some, More Noise

Oct. 17, 2013
Areas under expanded flight tracts on the Northwest Side of Chicago as well as suburbs west of the airport will be the hardest hit by the change in jet noise pattern.

Oct. 17--A new runway opens for business Thursday at O'Hare International Airport, a part of a much larger and costly expansion that is expected to eat away at delays that are among the worst in the nation.

But the 10,800-foot stretch of pavement, with its anticipated ramp-up in flights, has also triggered an uproar over jet noise that is expected to skew toward Chicago's Northwest Side and the western suburbs.

"It is a very dangerous time for all of us living around O'Hare,'' said Gene Spanos, a Park Ridge resident who also heads the group Citizens Against Plane Pollution, which has fought the new runway. "I think the FAA has a lot more homework to do before allowing any more runways to open up here."

O'Hare's four parallel runways, which could increase to six if the city and the airport's major airlines ever agree on how to pay for them, will allow air-traffic controllers to pump out more planes than ever, up to 150 takeoffs per hour, while landing as many as 112 aircraft hourly, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Put more simply, the airport's busiest periods will include a takeoff or landing about every 15 seconds.

The new runway ushers in an unprecedented and lasting change in air-traffic patterns at O'Hare, creating a flow that's eastbound 30 percent and westbound 70 percent over the course of a year, the FAA said. O'Hare's intersecting runways will be used sparingly, based on wind conditions, officials said.

Areas under expanded flight tracts on the Northwest Side of Chicago as well as suburbs west of the airport will be the hardest hit by the change in jet noise patterns, studies conducted by the Chicago Department of Aviation show.

Residents of communities in proximity to Pratt, Granville, Thorndale, Lawrence and Wilson avenues on the Northwest Side will see and hear more planes overhead, more often, day and night, city and FAA officials said.

Suburbs north and south of O'Hare will generally benefit from some noise relief, new noise contour maps suggest.

After a ribbon is cut on the tarmac Thursday, 10 Center/28 Center, O'Hare's newest and widest runway, will be the only airstrip capable of accommodating the largest planes in the commercial fleet: the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental, both of which are four-engine super-jumbo jets that seat 555 passengers and 400 to 500 passengers, respectively.

The number of arriving flights that O'Hare will be able to handle each hour will increase by up to 50 percent in good weather and increase about 25 percent during low-visibility, the FAA said.

But there are obstacles that could reduce the projected gains. As new runways will allow the airlines to increase the number of flights at O'Hare, gates for parking aircraft may be in short supply. Back in the 1990s, when there was an unofficial moratorium on new O'Hare runways because of strong suburban opposition, Chicago planned to build two additional terminals to alleviate a gate shortage. The terminals were never built.

The new runway, dubbed "the cemetery runway'' by O'Hare air-traffic controllers because it is on a recently removed graveyard, is only the second runway built since construction began eight years ago on the O'Hare expansion project, which was originally supposed to be completed last year but now will continue until at least 2020, according to projections by the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Although the FAA said that an O'Hare runway that opened in 2008 has reduced delays in aircraft taxiing times and other air-traffic metrics, from where the air traveler sits there has been minimal noticeable improvement.

O'Hare ranks dead last for on-time departures, and third from last for on-time arrivals, among the 29 largest U.S. airports in the first seven months of this year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Chicago and FAA officials predict the poor performance will improve thanks to the new, more efficient flight alignment that starts Thursday.

"We'll be able to reduce the distance required between airplanes ... and therefore increase the number of arrivals per hour that we can safely handle," said FAA spokeswoman Kristie Greco.

Reacting to the noise impact of the changes, a coalition of grass-roots groups has asked Chicago and the FAA to delay implementation of the new air-traffic procedures for one year in order to work out a solution that spreads out aircraft in the sky rather than saturating very localized areas with almost all of the noise.

Both Chicago Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino and FAA Great Lakes Regional Administrator Barry Cooper rejected the request, leaders of the groups say.

"The win-win here is for the FAA and the city to say the airport is not at capacity today so let's give it a year. But in our meeting with Andolino and Cooper, both said they won't stop the plan or delay it,'' said Jac Charlier, a leader of FAiR Allocation in Runways, which is composed of 11 civic groups.

Andolino and FAA representatives for Cooper did not respond to questions from the Tribune.

At least two members of Illinois' congressional delegation who support O'Hare expansion are waging a belated, last-ditch appeal to Chicago and the FAA to make whatever changes might be possible to air-traffic plans, which the city and the FAA have worked on since 2003.

In letters this month, U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley and Jan Schakowsky, both Chicago-area Democrats, asked Andolino to see whether flight paths could be adjusted to minimize air traffic over the most densely populated areas of the 5th and 9th congressional districts.

Quigley and Schakowsky, who say drawing more flights to O'Hare is vital to boosting the Illinois economy, also urged FAA Administrator Michael Huerta to expedite a review of air-traffic noise data with the purpose of expanding the areas covered by federal funding for soundproofing homes.

Charlier said the FAiR coalition, most members of which are in Quigley's district, is dissatisfied with the congressman's efforts.

"When you have a huge chunk of your district on the Northwest side and the near northwest suburbs saying we didn't know about this plan, we want intervention, he should at least side with us,'' Charlier said.

Spanos, whose group Citizens Against Plane Pollution is part of the coalition, said his biggest concern is the FAA's ability to maintain safe skies by keeping the proper spacing between planes under the new flight configurations.

Quigley responded to criticism by saying his intervention led to the coalition's meeting with Cooper and Andolino and that he will work to expand the home-insulation program and decrease airplane noise by "distributing the burden on as many runways as possible."

"O'Hare became a part of my district in January. The runway issue started in 2003 when I was a county commissioner,'' Quigley said.

Modernizing O'Hare is long overdue, according to Chicago officials. Growing air service means increasing airport revenues and improving Chicago's standing as a world-class travel destination, Andolino has said.

Chicago hopes to increase the number of flights to 1 million annually by about 2016, city officials said. Last year, O'Hare handled 878,108 flights, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. The highest on record is 992,427 flights in 2004.

The pace and cost of the work that has prompted such projections, however, have been moving targets.

Andolino told the City Club of Chicago on Sept. 16 that major progress continues to be made on the O'Hare project, which she said is "on schedule and on budget.''

But under the O'Hare Modernization Program approved by the FAA, city documents envisioned completion of the runway expansion project in 2012, at an estimated cost of $6.6 billion in 2001 dollars.

With the opening of the new runway Thursday, the eight-runway reconfiguration is only halfway completed and its outcome is in limbo. The city aviation department earlier this year said the current estimate to build the entire project is $9.7 billion in 2012 dollars. But Andolino and Emanuel recently have been citing a lower figure, $8 billion.

City aviation department spokespersons Karen Pride and Gregg Cunningham did not respond to multiple inquiries by the Tribune about the cost discrepancy.

City documents now cite 2020 as a target date for completion.

United Airlines and American Airlines have consistently said they won't help finance construction beyond a third new runway that is scheduled to open in 2015, unless business conditions warrant additional expansion.

"Our philosophy on the O'Hare Modernization Program has not changed. We will continue to support sensible, demand-driven projects to move OMP forward," United spokeswoman Christen David said.

American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan summed up the airline's position this way: "Our focus is on the (proposed) merger'' with US Airways.

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