"City waves off proposed extra runway at O'Hare"

Friday, August 8, 2003

City waves off proposed extra runway at O'Hare 
BY ROBERT C. HERGUTH AND FRAN SPIELMAN
The Chicago (IL) Sun-Times


The federal government suggested Thursday that adding a diagonal runway to
O'Hare Airport's south end, a tweak to the City of Chicago's
multibillion-dollar runway reconfiguration plans, could help the airfield
process airplanes better.

But city officials, reacting to the Federal Aviation Administration's
written comments, suggested the idea was as good as dead.

"The asserted benefits do not withstand analysis," said one city official.

Air traffic controllers floated the diagonal runway concept last spring. The
city's plans, which call for six parallel east-west strips and two
northeast-southwest ones, were unsafe and inefficient, they said.

If a 10,000-foot northwest-southeast strip was built on the southwest corner
of O'Hare, controllers said, there would be less risk of a collision and
planes could depart more quickly when winds blow from the east. Also,
taxiing times would drop, they said.

The FAA wrote that it "believes that there may be some operational
efficiency gains that could be realized by this alternative runway."

But city officials said their computer simulations of the proposed strip,
which could be built instead of, or in addition to, the southernmost
east-west runway being proposed by the city, so far don't bear out the
controllers' claims. More details will be released in coming weeks, city
officials said.

Craig Burzych, president of the controllers' union at O'Hare, said city
officials are "full of crap" if they try to say the diagonal runway, called
12-30, won't work.

He also said the strip would help O'Hare handle more flights in certain bad
weather conditions. The FAA, in its comments, said in one bad-weather
scenario, the city's proposed runway layout could handle several dozen fewer
flights per hour than the city claims.

City consultants, however, said that issue, and others raised by the FAA,
already have been addressed.

Meanwhile, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.), who single-handedly prevented
Congress from passing the O'Hare expansion deal, promised to keep up the
fight.

Fitzgerald said he would introduce a pension bill that, he claims, would
make it virtually impossible for bankrupt United Airlines to pay its share
of the O'Hare expansion--as high as $539 million, according to an
independent analysis.

"They have enormous difficulties financing the debt--paying for the bonds
that would have to be issued. The only way I see United being able to pay
its share is by skipping payments to its employee pension," Fitzgerald said.

"I don't think that's right. In the remaining year and a half that I'm
there, I'm going to try and prevent United from stiffing their employees,
period."

Already, United has underfunded its four employee pension funds by $7.5
billion, according to documents in the airline's pending bankruptcy case
that, Fitzgerald said, were filed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation.

The senator noted that United is even in default on the bonds issued to
build its existing O'Hare terminal. That's before a single spade of dirt has
been turned.

United spokesman Rich Nelson said it was "outrageous that he linked O'Hare
modernization and our pension funding, there's absolutely no connection
between the two.''


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