R.I.P. Meigs Field

Every pilot eventually discovers their favorite airport throughout their career for a variety of reasons. Some pilots favor small airports with little traffic, while others enjoy flying into busy airports close to large cities. Sadly, the airport I always dreamed of flying into was closed only months before I began flight lessons. Meigs Field in Chicago became known to me when I played Microsoft Flight Simulator as an early teenager because the airport was the default starting point of the game. I then realized the airport had such an ideal location right on the lakefront of the city. However, I definitely wasn’t the only one favoring this location, because the controversy supporting Meigs eventually made national headlines.

Meigs Field was located on Northerly Island and pilots flying into the airport would get closer to downtown than anyone nearby ever could. It was a spectacular sight for pilots and passengers to see and by 1955 it was the busiest single strip airport in the world. Airline service eventually came to Meigs and the close up view of the city made it a very popular location for the wealthy to travel in and out of Chicago. However, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government became very concerned on the proximity of Meigs Field to the heavily populated city. The airport took over a month to reopen after the terrorist attacks and that is when Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daily began to push for the airport being permanently shut down.

Tens of thousands of supporters for Meigs Field, prominently lead by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), petitioned the government to save the airport. In 2001, a deal was made between state and local governments to keep Meigs Field running for 25 more years, but unfortunately it did not pass the United States Senate. Meigs made headlines on March 30, 2003, when Mayor Daily secretly demolished the runway during the middle of the night. The FAA immediately sought legal action against the city, for not notifying the agency of the closing and leaving airplanes stranded at the field.

There were no NOTAMs issued for Meigs being closed until hours after Daily carved X’s along the entire runway and chained the remaining portions of pavement. One airplane had to immediately go around after seeing that there was no runway to land and the stranded airplanes had to takeoff from the 3000 ft taxiway. This act caused an outrage among the general aviation community and compromised homeland security because no controlling agency knew the airport was inoperable. Ever since this day, AOPA and other supports of aviation continue to do everything in their power to protect general aviation airports and prevent another incident like Meigs from ever occurring again.