O'HARE — Complaints about jet noise rose to unprecedented heights from January to March as residents of the Far Northwest Side used a new app designed to make it easier to complain about the racket made by planes using the newest east-west runway at O'Hare Airport.
The app has been so successful, the influx of new complaints has crashed the city's servers.
In March, 352,846 complaints were filed with city officials — an all-time record and a nearly 893,000 percent increase from the number of jet noise complaints filed in January, according to data released by the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission.
Since Feb. 1, more than 1 million noise complaints have been filed with city officials, according to the commission.
Source: O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission [DNAinfo/Tanveer Ali]
The data released Friday morning by the commission is the first tally to reflect complaints logged through chicagonoisecomplaint.com designed by Darrin Thomas, a member of the Fair Allocation in Runways Coalition, that allows angry residents to log their anger with one click, rather than fill out the city's long form.
Thomas said he was pleased the app he designed allowed residents angry about jet noise to be "fully heard."
"The problem is much larger than [this commission] can handle," Thomas said after Friday's meeting.
A visualization of the data collected by the app makes it clear that planes turning over residential areas are "hammering" the same neighborhoods over and over again, Thomas said.
It is "very obvious" that flight paths should be altered to require plans to turn over the lake or forest preserves, Thomas said.
Thomas said it was "comical" that nothing had been done for two years to reduce the racket.
Commission Chairwoman Arlene Juracek said officials were doing their "best to make sense of the data."
However, the tens of thousands of complaints makes it difficult to separate "frustration" from abnormal operating conditions that need to be addressed, Juracek said, warning airport observers not to put too much "scientific faith" in the numbers.
"Obviously, the level of frustration is high," Juracek said. "We're very much aware of it."
The influx of complaints generated by Thomas' app have repeatedly taken down the city's servers, prompting many anti-O'Hare noise advocates to question whether the numbers of complaints released by the commission is accurate.
Of the total number of complaints filed in March, 37 percent were made from eight addresses, according to the commission.
Approximately 11 percent of the 147,429 complaints filed by Chicago residents in March were filed from three addresses, according to the commission.
But the number of people filing complaints rose 550 percent from January to March — and only 0.2 percent of the complaints in March were filed by phone, according to the commission.
Complaints can be made by calling a 24-hour hotline — 800-435-9569 — or submitting an online form.
In October 2013 a new east-west runway opened as part of the $8.7 billion O'Hare Modernization Program, sending hundreds of flights over areas of the Northwest Side like North Park, Jefferson Park Edgebrook, Edison Park and Norwood Park that previously heard little or no jet noise in previous years.
Flight patterns at O'Hare are designed to ensure the airport operated as efficiently and safely as possible, federal aviation officials said.
A panel discussion about O'Hare's Fly Quiet program took up much of the meeting, with officials from the Chicago Department of Aviation, American and United airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration and the O'Hare Control Tower answering questions about whether the program could be expanded to allow residents to get a better night sleep.
The program, which urges planes to choose flight paths over less-populated areas, such as forest preserves and expressways, from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., could not be expanded without reducing the capacity of the airport to handle the demand for flights, said Aaron Frame, the assistant commissioner for noise abatement of the Chicago Department of Aviation.
Legislation would be required to make the policy mandatory, officials said.
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