O'HARE — Complaints about jet noise dropped 5.5 percent from September to November, as Northwest Side residents stayed indoors during a cold, damp fall — away from the racket made by planes using a new runway at O'Hare Airport.
In October, 33,866 complaints were made to the city-run toll-free hotline and website, more complaints than were filed in all of 2013, and up 4 percent from September, according to data released Friday by the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission.
In October 2013, when the new runway opened and began to send hundreds of planes over Far Northwest Side neighborhoods that had had little to no jet traffic before, only 3,496 complaints were lodged with city officials via a toll-free hotline and website.
However, 57 percent of the complaints filed in October were filed from just 10 addresses in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, according to the commission.
In November, 30,748 complaints were filed with city officials, fewer than in September and October, but more than the number of complaints filed each month from January to August 2014, according to the commission.
Since September of 2013 — before the new east-west runway opened last fall as part of the $8.7 billion O'Hare Modernization Program — the number of complaints have skyrocketed approximately 1,240 percent, according to data from the noise commission.
Residents of Ald. Mary O'Connor's 41st Ward, which includes Norwood Park and Edison Park, filed the highest number of complaints of any Chicago ward, logging 5,315 objections during October to the sound of planes taking off and landing at O'Hare, an increase of approximately 13 percent.
In November, 41st Ward residents filed 2,290 complaints, a decrease of almost 57 percent.
More than 25 percent of the 6,767 complaints filed by Chicago residents in November came from three addresses, according to the commission.
In a letter dated Dec. 23, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Huerta rejected the commission's request made at its October meeting asking the department to re-do the now-decade old study of the impact on the surrounding neighborhoods of the new flight paths to and from O'Hare.
The FAA has rejected similar requests from community groups, Chicago aldermen and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley.
In addition, Huerta said the FAA was not be able to meet the commission's request to complete an initial assessment of whether additional environmental studies are needed to determine the impact of a new runway scheduled to open in October 2015 on noise and air pollution by Jan. 1, 2015.
That study will be complete by the time the runway opens in October 2015, Huerta wrote.
Another of O'Hare's diagonal runways is scheduled to be decommissed in August to allow flight operations to be reconfigured before the new runway opens, officials said.
Flight patterns at O'Hare are designed to ensure the airport operated as efficiently and safely as possible, federal aviation officials said.
Chairwoman Arlene Mulder, who has led the noise commission since it was formed in 1997, announced Friday she will not seek re-election in March when the commission picks new officers March 13 from a slate of candidates recommended by the commission's nominating committee.
Mulder, the former five-term mayor of Arlington Heights, said she wanted to spend more time with her family while her health is still good.
"I am honored to have served," Mulder said, holding back tears.
The Fair Allocation in Runways Coalition called for Mulder's resignation in November, saying she failed to address the escalating number of noise complaints prompted by the opening of the east-west runway in 2013.
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