O’Hare plan that spreads out nighttime jet noise starts Sunday
A plan intended to spread the pain of nighttime jet noise more equitably among communities around O’Hare International Airport will start Sunday and continue into May.
Currently, O’Hare uses just the parallel, east-west runways at night. The socalled “Interim Fly Quiet” plan will mix in diagonal runways, so an east-west runway will be used one week, then a diagonal runway the next, then back to east-west, with adjustments made depending on weather and other factors.
It will mean more noise for suburbs like Des Plaines, to the northwest of the airport, while areas more directly east or west, such as Bensenville and some North Side Chicago neighborhoods, will get less.
“It will help every community that is impacted by the use of the parallel runways at nighttime,” said Bensenville Village Manager Evan Summers. “It also offers predictability. This week you get relief, then you go back to the status quo and the next week you get relief again.”
Summers is on the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission, a group of municipalities and school districts around the airport that approved the plan in December 2017. Versions of the plan were tested starting in 2016. The Federal Aviation Administration approved it to move forward this year.
Residents of communities around the airport have complained for decades about jets roaring over their houses, disrupting sleep and rattling the china. Complaints rose after the city began shifting traffic from the diagonal runways to newer parallel east-west runways, which concentrate more traffic over the city’s North Side and the western suburbs.
The Fly Quiet plan continues for 28 weeks, through May 17, when work is scheduled to begin on Runway 4R-22L pavement rehabilitation, according to a statement from the noise commission. The plan will resume Sept. 13 and be in place for 20 weeks through February 2021, when it will end with the construction of the Runway 9R extension.
The commission is working on a Fly Quiet 2021 plan, Summers said. “It’s much more complicated, and it’ll be a more permanent configuration, so we have to get it right.”