Yeah, but is it a *heated *snorkeling lagoon?
Sounds like an excellent opportunity for a corporate partnership with an energy company! It can be the “Illinois Natural Gas Plant #6 Family Fun Lagoon.” Be sure to visit during one of the twice-daily lamprey feedings! A sight to behold, I’ve heard.
Tell that to the idiots responsible for the Patriot Act.
-hijack- (slight)
Being the non-Aviator in this thread, I do have to say that I can understand Mayor Daley’s “stiffy” for the Northerly Island parcel. It’s a nice little island in the middle of the whole “Museum Campus” -area.
I’d like to see a nice multi-sport stadium on N.I. Or another bandshell. Or a small airport (wait…).
The Mayor needs to go down. In the aviaition world, he is the scum of the earth. Where is the law when you really need it.
I guess the death sentance could be given if the damage or theft is seen as an act of murder.
I’m sorry to hear that this has happened to your airfield Broomstick.
Australia is going through a bizarre security crack down on every little airfield at the moment. Placing “security” fencing everywhere, changing gate codes and no longer publishing the codes in aviation documents. They are sending wheel clamps to aircraft owners and requiring them to be fitted to aircraft.
Dad and I used to take the ol’ Cessna to Las Vegas for lunch. Even though the FBO was only a two- or three-minute walk from the tie-downs, security regulations required pilots to wait by their aircraft to be picked up by a shuttle bus. After two hours in a Cessna, it would have been nice to stretch my legs walking to the FBO.
Uh, runway lights are there so the pilots have a path to direct the plane down during takeoff and landings. They’re not there so others can observe the runways. Plus, planes are rather loud - especially ones that are throttled up for takeoff. Makes it kinda hard to be “sneaky.”
They don’t call him “King” Daley for nothing!
I agree, but still, if I was to steal a plane I’d want it as dark as possible. Maybe they could hear me but they wouldn’t be able to see me.
Admit it? Oh please - the next day he held a press conference where he fucking bragged about what he had had done. Said he didn’t give a damn about the aircraft stranded there, it wasn’t his problem, and if necessary the pilots could get a good price for selling them as scrap aluminum.
I’ll stop now before I start frothing at the mouth and inventing new swear words.
The airport is gone - runway plowed up and carted away, tower demolished, etc. It is now a “park” which is really a torn up vacant lot that has a locked gate around it that no one uses.
:eek:
{{{{brrrrrrrrrr}}}}
My teeth are chattering just thinking about it.
Although I’m told the Chicago river near the locks has many fine examples of Prohibition era luxury automobiles, some of them with the original owners still inside, wearing their stylish cement boots.
Uh, yeah, those fences do a shitload of good when you’re talking about vehicles that can fly over those same fences.
Securing the airplane - prop locks, wheel locks, locked hangars - makes more sense than fencing the airport if you’re worried about people stealing aircraft.
It’s not always pitch black - on clear nights with moonlight pilots sometimes take off and land without using the runway lights, using the ambient light, street lights, local house lights. I’m not in the boonies, you know, it’s fairly civilized around here even if it is Indiana. 
And yeah, you can’t hide the noise the airplanes make on take-off, and there’s only two stretches of pavement with enough run to allow take-off - the runway, or Main Street, which has street lights and is well lit. And, oh yes, is covered over with tree canopies and powerlines so really, there’s only one place you can take off due to physical limitations, like inability to fly through a solid object.
You can stop a departing plane of the sort we fly by the simple expediant of parking a pick up or SUV in the take-off path. Sure, the road vehicle will take some hefty damage (park it and run would be my advice) but the airplane will be destroyed.
This is The Pit! Knock yourself out! 
Did he really say they could sell them for scrap? What a schmuck.
Yeah, he said that, among other things.
He was also pissed as hell when the FAA let the stranded airplanes fly out on the taxiway, which he had neglected to destroy. Kept crowing about how it was unsafe to fly off anything but a designated runway, etc. Fucking dyspetic jackass. Doesn’t no shit about aviation, that’s for sure. Thought he was going to have a stroke when those airplanes flew out of Meigs.
You see, it was personal with him - he’d tried to close Meigs years before and had been told “no”. In his world, no one tells Da Mayor “no”.
The pilots involved sued for expenses - I’m not sure of the results.
Apparently, a city employee had been dispatched to Meigs every night for a couple of months so they could choose a night with no big-name corporate jets on the ramp, just “little people”. Which sort of sums up Daley’s attitude towards most of the citizens of his city. Which is another reason I’m glad I moved.
Don’t forget there was a political element too. When the Republicans controlled Springfield Big Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar and the other pols flew in and out of there a lot. So it was a way of getting back a them. Also a bit of class warfare went on, since the Mayor liked to talk about the rich people who flew in for the day just to show on Michigan Avenue, then flew out again. But you say, didn’t that help the city’s economy? Shut the hell up!
And don’t forget someone tampered with a security camera that was pointed at the runway so there would be no video of the bulldozers doing their work at 2am!
Lute, that’s exactly my point. The thing I’m debating here is intent. No-one’s disputing that their actions had the potential to be life-threatening. But stoners trying to hotwire an airplane for a joyride isn’t terrorism! Not unless they planned to use that aircraft to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”!
I can see it now! “Give me munchies, duuuude, or I’ll mow this plane into a 7-11!” 
Max.