Did the airport receive any federal funds? If so, there may be a requirement to keep it open.
If the mayor deprived any of the pilots of those airdcraft of their livelihoods, and indeed since he deprived several people of their livelihoods, then wouldn’t he be guilty of violating their civil rights protections that guarantee “due process”?
Any chance that the news 'copters might boycot covering any action in Chicago? It’d be a shame if the poor commuters couldn’t get their traffic reports.
Too bad those MoCs didn’t find out about it as they were on short-final!
So basically, Daley came like a thief in the night and stole the airport. He has, I think, stolen federal funds by getting the expansion of O’Hare, since I’ll bet there were federal funds involved in that. If he accepted and used federal funds, then he is guilty of fraud. (AOPA indicates that what he did may not have been illegal, but that they are looking into it.)
Does anyone know his rationale behind carving up the runway, instead of merely paining Xs on it like every other airport in the country does?
Or am I correct in assuming he just wanted to be a dick? I mean, if someone still wanted to use the airport in a threating manner (BUAHAHAHAHAHAH), they could still use the taxiway.
Why the heck do you Chicagoans keep electing Daley’s?? You just elected this Daley to a fifth term, incomprehensible. What do you expect from this guy? He’s a remnant of machine politics, a relic from the mostly bygone era of playing white ethnic groups off each other for political gain, he has no integrity whatsoever. His whole family is more like the “family” from Road to Perdition than it is like more respectable political families (and who knows, that movie was based on a real family, there might be a real connection back in history for all I know.) Depending on who you ask, this is a family that outright stole a Presidential election. These are not clean people. You just gotta suspect something dirty going on when a Daley’s behaviour is this odd.
As someone who grew up in Rock Island and is familiar with the usual Illinois “Chicago First” politics, I hope this jerk gets what’s coming to him: a criminal indictment.
Does anyone here know if this will have any effect on the proposed South Suburban airport? Is that airport still on track to be built, and could this speed up the timetable for that airport? I know it doesn’t help right now, but if that airport is ever constructed and operational, could it also relieve some of the air congestion around Chicago?
IANA pilot, and partial disability means I probably never will be one. [I did once, for a few minutes, control a Cessna piloted by my then-girlfriend’s brother over Maine – this was a dual-control training model so no lives were at risk!]
Yet, when I first visited Chicago in 1985, on my initial day – after the Art Institute but before the Sears Tower or the Museum of Science and Industry – I visited Meigs Field.
Why was that?
Because I, together with millions of others worldwide, had already been there before in the virtual world. Meigs was the Default Airport for Microsoft Flight Simulator. For all I know it still is.
So, many years before September 11 2001, I had taken off from Meigs and looped over the Loop, trying to miss the downtown buildings but perhaps slip between the antennae on the Hancock Building. The FS developers always did a good job of keeping up with the latest improvements in terrain mapping and aircraft realism. Meigs was a perfect little world to learn in – you had lots of visual stimulation, it wasn’t trivial to land on (just one runway, and short at that), and you could always make a quick hop to O’Hare or Midway. The fact that the runway was 18/36 made navigation easy, too!
All in all, it’s easy to see why the initial developers of the World’s Greatest Flight Simulator (mass-market, at least), who were I believe from Champaign-Urbana, chose Meigs Field.
To make this post more pit-worthy, it does sound really fucking cowardly of Daley to do this in the middle of the night without notice, and using backhoes instead of white-line-painters. What if some poor sod had had engine trouble over Lake Michigan that night and tried to make an emergency landing?
RIP Meigs Field. I learned to fly Cessnas, Learjets, and helicopters on you. I sometimes overshot you or bought the farm and augured in, but you forgave me. I don’t feel the same generosity to Mayor Daley.
It seems all of our lives are destined to get a little sadder each day. Some things can’t be avoided, or at least not easily. This one could have been.
Broomstick, I always enjoy reading your posts, and those of other Doper aviators (Johnny LA comes to mind, and I know I’m forgetting others). I’m sorry for your loss, even if it wasn’t your home field.
Perhaps you could hold a ChiDope in the middle of 18/36 at Meigs?
He did that last time they closed Meigs and discovered it was altogether too easy to scrub the paint off the runway when he was forced to let it re-open.
If the runway was merely painted the 16 stranded airplanes would still be able to leave from it. Now, if by some miracle the airport did re-open, who would dare to fly there and risk having their airplane stranded there?
Last time Daley learned that X means closed. This time he made it stick. See, he just carved up the ruway enough to make it unusable, then he stopped. If he was so right, why not keep chewing up the runway when daylight came? Gotta get ready for that casino, right? Naw… the way he did it was meant to really stick it to general aviation.
Well, aside from corruption… since Daley’s been Mayor the lights are on (usually), the sewers work (when they aren’t flooding the subway), the garbage gets picked up, and, most important, when it snows the streets get plowed. When it comes to doing things that keep the city infrastructure running Daley is a competant Mayor. It’s when he dabbles in other stuff that he becomes a problem. Sometimes a big problem.
And no, I didn’t vote for him - I live in Indiana, I’m not supposed to vote in Chicago. Not that I wasn’t encouraged to register and vote, of course… several times.
The answers to your questions are no, no, no, and no.
The South Suburban Stillbirth was intended for passenger jets - the sort that use Midway and O’Hare. Those sorts of airplanes could never have landed at Meigs. The S3 has been in political limbo for a couple years now, and with the economy in the toilet will remain there. It is extremely unlikely such an airport will help the congestion around Chicago because 1) the airlines are against it and have already said they won’t fly there and 2) it’s too damn far away from the big city, especially for anyone on the north side.
He would have had a major problem. If he piled it in on top of a backhoe Daley would be sueing his estate now, and the FAA would be sueing Daley for… I don’t know… something. And maybe Daley could be brought up on homicide charges. Manslaughter. Something. But then he’d probably blame it on overenthusiastic underlings and trying to shift the blame.
Or maybe the “poor sod” would have landed on Grant Park or Lake Shore Drive. And Daley would have a fit, of course, but pilots in an emergency do have rather broad authority to pick a landing spot and the Feds would side with the pilot in that case. But Daley would find some way to penalize the guy, and twist the facts to support his view of little planes as dangerous.
I have to pass by Meigs going to and from work each day. This will not be easy. I can’t see it directly from the train, but I’ll know it’s there - or rather, it’s not there.
Looking at the ruins, I kept getting one of the nagging things where something reminds you of something else. Well, I’ve figured it out - this reminds me of Krystallnacht, the night Nazis smashed Jewish businesses. Look at the parrallels:
they came in the middle of the night
they smashed and destroyed
they felt justified and saw their victims as the enemy or potential enemy
One big difference -> what the Nazis did, at the time they did it, was still illegal, at least on paper. What Daley did… it appears by a series of technicalities the law is on his side. But just because it’s legal it doesn’t make the act morally or ethically right.
Wonder if you could get it declared a Historical Area…
No, I’m serious. I’d forgotten about it being the Flight Sim default Airport… and I swear that that product has done more for general avation than anything else in the world.
I’m with you Antonius Block. The first time I ever flew into O’hare IRL, I was leaning for the window so I could see Meigs field. Lord only knows the number of times I took off from there, headed to parts unknown.
I had actually been following this little saga vetween the mayor and the airport for a while on this website:
He appointed her to the head of the planning committee for converting it to a park. Maggie Daley is the “civilizing” influence 'round these parts. We have her to thank for planter medians and the ornate new streetlights popping up everywhere, if rumors are to be believed. For all the money dumped into beautification projects, they could leave the standard green streetlights and maybe give some dough to the struggling businesses in formerly thriving neighborhoods instead, or the schools, or for affordable, non-decrepit housing, or anything but fucking PLANTER MEDIANS!
Well, I see the value in getting things done. But is that really enough for people? Heck, mobsters got things done when they ran the city, getting things done for people was what fueled the initial growth of mafia families in Italian communites, basically replacing the role of government in those communities. The Tom Pendergast machine in KC got things done too. Heck, I’m sure things got done when Giancana ran Chicago. Apparently getting things done is a successful way to get a community to ignore corruption. (I know you didn’t vote for him, this is an accusation at the Chicago voters.) As for myself, I’d feel quite the fool if I let somebody defraud me and steal from me while I was busy admiring his team of snow plows. But I guess we all set our own priorities in politicians…
I’m just wondering how long before Microsoft issues a terrain patch for Flight Sim like they’ve done in the past for the Berlin Wall* and WTC. Any bets on what the new default airport will be?
IIRC, in Flight Sim 2000, the Berlin Wall simply disappears if you fly in that area after whatever date it came down, and is there if you’re in the neighborhood before that date.
Hmm…why does that sound familiar…a politician doing whatever he feels like without listening to the public’s opinion? Where have I heard something like this before…
Ohhhh yeah…now I remember…I’m guessing Daley has plans to run for President? Showing good presidential form right there, based on our current administration.
