O'HARE — Complaints about jet noise rose approximately 20 percent from December to January — even as most Far Northwest Side residents huddled inside to keep out the brutally cold weather — and the racket made by planes using the newest east-west runway at O'Hare Airport.
In January, 39,500 complaints were filed with city officials — an all-time record and a 525 percent increase from the number of jet noise complaints filed in January 2014, according to data released by the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission.
But 63 percent of the complaints filed in January were filed from just six addresses in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, according to the commission.
Of the 9,772 complaints from Chicagoans, 44 percent came from one address.
Colleen Cichon-Mulcrone, a Jefferson Park resident, told the comission those complaints should not be discounted.
"That number of complaints accurately reflect the real-world experience," said Mulcrone, who hears jet noise for 15 to 22 hours every day.
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 1,760 percent, according to the commission.
Darrin Thomas, the creator of an app released that streamlines the process warned the commission to brace for an onslaught of complaints in the February tally.
More than 200,000 complaints have been filed with the city through chicagonoisecomplaint.com — enough to take the city's servers down repeatedly with the huge influx, Thomas told the commission.
"At what point do the numbers mean that we get a voice?" Thomas asked. "I want to target that number."
Mount Prospect Village President Arlene Juracek, who was elected Friday as chairwoman of the commission, said regardless of whether residents file "30,000 complaints or 300,000 complaints" the 55-member group knows people are suffering because of the jet noise.
Residents of the 40th Ward, which includes which includes parts of West Ridge, Andersonville, Edgewater, Rogers Park, Lincoln Square and Ravenswood, filed the highest number of complaints in January of any Chicago ward, logging 4,725 complaints. In December, residents of that North Side Ward filed only 252 complaints.
Residents of the 41st Ward, which includes Norwood Park and Edison Park, logged 1,221 objections to the sound of planes taking off and landing at O'Hare, a decrease of approximately 36 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.
Residents of the 45th Ward, which includes Jefferson Park and parts of Gladstone Park, Old Irving Park, Portage Park and Forest Glen, filed 1,104 complaints, a decrease of 5 percent from December.
Ald. John Arena (45th) will face Chicago Police Lt. John Garrido on April 7.
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.
However, the runway scheduled to be decommissioned was used for only 1 percent of daytime operations at O'Hare, because it intersects with other runways, officials said.
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 the law that approved the expansion plan to be in use at O'Hare at any one time, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.
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