CHICAGO (AP) - Aviation officials in Chicago released a plan Friday to limit some of the jet noise around O’Hare International Airport that residents have been complaining about since flight patterns changed two year ago.
Under the proposal, the airport would rotate which runways are used at night to more evenly distribute jet noise. The plan, however, disappointed community groups because it rejected their more expansive demands, including a call to keep open two diagonal runways slated for demolition so jets are not always flying over the same neighborhoods.
“We know that airport noise is a challenge for many residents,” Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans said. “But we are confident that we can move forward with concrete steps to ensure a higher quality of life for O’Hare’s neighbors, while maximizing the safety and efficiency” of O’Hare.”
The city says it will seek ways of getting funding for more home soundproofing. Other noise-reducing steps could include requiring aircraft to use only one engine while taxiing, and working with American Airlines to phase out louder MD-80 aircraft. The city’s proposal still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Planes began landing and taking off at O’Hare in a primarily east-west pattern in October 2013. The airport is the midst of a decade-long $9 billion overhaul to replace its web of intersecting runways with a safer and more efficient side-by-side layout.
The new air pattern has concentrated flights over fewer neighborhoods, leading to skyrocketing complaints and the calls to keep all four diagonal runways operational. One is set to be decommissioned in August. Another will close in 2019.
Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill Thursday that would grant O’Hare legislative permission to keep those two runways in operation.
But the Chicago Department of Aviation said they must be decommissioned as planned because of “significant safety issues with an antiquated, intersecting airfield configuration, a lack of operational efficiency and increased costs associated with keeping the runways open.”
Molly Dec lives just east of O’Hare in the village of Nooridge in a home blasted by the sound of planes every one or two minutes starting at 4:30 a.m. The frequency eases after 7 a.m. but then increases again around dinner time. She doesn’t yet qualify for soundproofing but hopes the nighttime changes will at least help her and her family get some sleep.
“I’m cautiously optimist that it will help,” said Dec, who represents the village in the anti-noise group Fair Allocation in Runways. “But until I see it and live it, it’s tough for me to say, ’Wow, this is a big win.’”
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