O'HARE — Complaints about jet noise rose 7 percent from November to December — even as most Far Northwest Side residents kept their windows shut tight to keep out the cold and the racket made by planes using the newest east-west runway at O'Hare Airport.
In December, 32,959 complaints were filed with city officials, a 609 percent increase from the number of jet noise complaints filed in December 2013, two months after the runway opened, according to data released by the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission.
But 63 percent of the complaints filed in October were filed from just eight addresses in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, according to the commission.
Complaints can be made by calling a 24-hour hotline — 800-435-9569 — or submitting an online form.
Since September 2013 — before the new east-west runway opened as part of the $8.7 billion O'Hare Modernization Program — the number of complaints have skyrocketed approximately 1,450 percent, according to the commission.
Residents of the 41st Ward, which includes Norwood Park and Edison Park, filed the highest number of complaints in December of any Chicago ward, logging 1,921 objections to the sound of planes taking off and landing at O'Hare, a decrease of approximately 16 percent from November.
Ald. Mary O'Connor (41st) will face Chicago firefighter Anthony Napolitano in a runoff on April 7. Napolitano credits anger about jet noise — and at the city's response — for boosting his campaign.
Another of O'Hare's diagonal runways is scheduled to be decommissioned in August to allow flight operations to be reconfigured before a another new east-west runway opens in October, officials said.
That plan has drawn fire from the Fair Allocation in Runways Coalition, which has urged elected officials to reduce the amount of noise over the Far Northwest Side by spreading out arrivals and departures among all of the runways.
If a diagonal runway is closed, the skies above Jefferson Park, Edgebrook, Sauganash and North Park could be even noisier, according to members of the coalition. Residents in those neighborhoods heard little to no jet racket before the runway opened in 2013.
Flight patterns at O'Hare are designed to ensure the airport operated as efficiently and safely as possible, federal aviation officials said.
Only eight runways are allowed by law to be in use at O'Hare at any one time, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.
The commission's next meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. March 13, when it is expected to elect Mount Prospect Mayor Arlene Juracek as chairwoman.
Juracek would replace former Arlington Heights Mayor Arlene Mulder, who announced in January she would not seek re-election after leading the commission since it was created in 1997.
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