"FAA finds problems with O'Hare plan"

Friday, August 8, 2003

FAA finds problems with O'Hare plan 
By Robert McCoppin
The Chicago (IL) Daily Herald

 
Chicago will have to make changes to get as many flights as it predicted at
an expanded O'Hare International Airport, federal regulators said Thursday.

The rebuilt airport, as initially proposed, would also have too many runway
crossings and might need a different or additional runway, regulators said.

But city aviation consultants believe they will have all of the major
problems fixed before regulators pass final judgment on the plan.

"We still believe we'll get those (capacity) numbers," said Ramon Ricondo,
president of city aviation consultant Ricondo & Associates.

The relatively minor criticisms of the plan came from the Federal Aviation
Administration's review of the city's airport layout plan.

This is a more detailed follow-up to a preliminary report in May, when the
FAA found no major problems that would prevent operation of the reconfigured
airport.

This time, the FAA concluded that in bad weather when planes come and go
from the east - a rare circumstance - O'Hare could only handle 88 arrivals
and 88 departures an hour, less than the 117 arrivals and 125 departures
Chicago had estimated.

The lower rate would be slightly higher than the current arrival rate of 78
arrivals and departures.

The new airport layout could also run into problems with 1,000 runway
crossings a day, regulators concluded, once a new west terminal opens and
its longest northwest-southeast runway is still in operation.

Finally, regulators called for city officials to look further at the FAA's
proposal for a new angled runway on the south end of the airfield, either in
place of or in addition to a new east-west runway at the south end.

Air traffic controllers have said the angled runway is crucial to minimizing
dangerous runway crossings.

The capacity problem can be fixed, Ricondo said, by changing taxiways to
allow for smoother traffic flow on the ground.

The runway crossing problem will be addressed by crossing in front of or
after where planes are using the runways, and by phasing in use of the west
terminal to minimize traffic there until the long diagonal runway is closed.

As for the FAA's proposed new runway, computer simulations should be
complete by the end of the August.

In two to three months, city consultants plan to submit final revisions to
their plan, in hopes of winning FAA approval by June of next year.


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