RETIRING FAA CHIEF TALKS POSSIBLE ‘ ENDGAME’ FOR O’HARE ROTATION
1As Chicago rolls out another overnight runway rotation test at O’Hare Airport, some suburbanites will curse the skies at unexpected jet noise while others get muchneeded shut- eye.
The third runway rotation that started July 23 is familiar now to folks living near O’Hare. But departing FAA executive Barry Cooper says it’s a gamechanging idea that’s getting national attention.
After Chicago trotted out its first rotation experiment in summer 2016, it’s become a new norm for the region, but the approach is actually “quite novel,” explained Cooper.
The FAA has signed off on three separate rotation tests, and the first two have proved relatively successful in guaranteeing quieter nights.
So would the agency think outside the box in approving a permanent rotation?
“That’s the end game,” said Cooper, who just retired from his job as the FAA’s regional administrator for the Great Lakes Region, which includes eight states.
O’Hare already has a Fly Quiet program at night intended to appease homeowners by using designated runways.
“It has served a purpose,” Cooper said in a recent exit interview. But “traffic changes and new runways get built and get closed so obviously Fly Quiet, as it has existed, is obsolete.”
The current rotation will last 12 weeks and is an attempt to evenly distribute the din.
“We are attempting to create a regional approach to better manage noise by providing predictable periods of sound relief,” Mount Prospect Mayor and O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission Chairwoman Arlene Juracek said.
But the rotation didn’t please everyone when O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission members approved it in June.
Out of the roster is diagonal Runway 15/ 33, which will be retired in spring 2018 as O’Hare shifts to a parallel, east- west flight system. That irks residents of suburbs such as Park Ridge who dread more flights over homes.
Other communities such as Des Plaines objected to the inclusion of another diagonal runway that will cause sleepless nights for some neighborhoods.
But west of O’Hare, residents in Bensenville and Wood Dale who’ve endured an onslaught of planes from the emerging parallel configuration were grateful for any respite the rotation promised.
The rotation tests will give the Chicago Department of Aviation “meaningful data to work with the noise commission to develop whatever the new Fly Quiet is, and it may be some sort of rotation plan,” Cooper said.