O'HARE — A committee voted Wednesday to move forward on a second round of the O'Hare Fly Quiet Runway Rotation Program, which aims to spread the burden of jet noise around the airport during overnight hours.
But the plan for the rotation test's next round, which would begin in the spring and last no longer than six months, would re-shuffle the paths of low-flying planes to send more jets over Norwood Park than the program did during its trial run last year.
Facing a groundswell of complaints from residents who said a new runway has sent jumbo jets zooming above their homes since it opened in 2013, the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission approved the Fly Quiet program last year in an effort to temper the noise. Between July and December, the program directed overnight flights to change their takeoff and landing paths every week, ideally keeping any one neighborhood from being pummeled by low-flying planes.
City aviation officials said Wednesday they'd swap out five of the program's 10 runway configurations, citing safety concerns from air traffic controllers and federal regulators.
The changes mean that for two weeks of the test, overnight flights would be directed to take off from one of the airport's upper runways, which would send them over Edison Park, Norwood Park and Jefferson Park. During last year's rotation, planes were sent over those neighborhoods during just one week.
[Chicago Department of Aviation]
A map of noise complaints recorded in the areas surrounding O'Hare Airport[Chicago Department of Aviation]
During another week of the program, departing flights would be shifted away from Dunning and sent instead over suburban Norridge and Harwood Heights.
[Chicago Department of Aviation]
Flights would be directed to runways that send them over city neighborhoods during six weeks of the 12-week program, according to Aaron Frame, a deputy commissioner for the city's aviation department. During the rest of the period, they would be sent to diagonal runways, launching them over mostly wooded or industrial areas.
At a meeting earlier this month, city aviation officials touted data suggesting that the six-month trial brought relief to Chicagoans and suburbanites living under commercial flight paths.
The results of a public online survey suggested that a narrow majority of residents near the airport approved of the program and wanted it to continue. The survey registered responses from more than 6,100 people, including 746 people who said they live in Chicago.
But city residents filed almost 108,000 jet noise complaints with the city between July and November, while the Fly Quiet program was in effect — just a 3 percent drop compared to the previous five months, according to data released by the commission. The number of people filing complaints, meanwhile, fell by about 9 percent.
The 10 proposed runway configurations for this year's Fly Quiet runway rotation program. Two of the diagonal patterns would be repeated to extend the program over 12 weeks, officials said.[Chicago Department of Aviation]
The full commission will vote on whether to green-light the program at its next meeting, set for March 10 at Cafe La Cave in suburban Des Plaines.
A permanent overnight rotation plan would be unlikely to take effect until after 2020, when the airport will have decommissioned one of its diagonal runways and added an east-west runway, Frame said.
