Un candidat à la mairie de Chicago propose la re-ouverture de Chicago Meigs ! Désolé, c'est en anglais

Re-Open Meigs Field Airport

Meigs was the second largest business district airport in North America. Meigs Field airport was closed when Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley ordered the runway destroyed with bulldozers without the thirty-day notice required by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.

During the early 1970s there were up to eight round trip nonstop flights a day between Meigs and the Illinois state capital in Springfield.[5] Other commuter air carriers serving Meigs Field in 1975 included Midwest Commuter Airways with nonstop flights to Indianapolis and South Bend, and Skystream Airlines with nonstops to Detroit City Airport with both small airlines operaring there.

Scheduled passenger helicopter airline service was also available between Meigs Field and Chicago O’Hare Airport and Chicago Midway Airport at different times over the years. From the late 1950s to late 1960s, Chicago Helicopter Airways operated 12-seat Sikorsky S-58C helicopters with frequent flights to both O’Hare and Midway.[7]
Numerous VIPs used the airport in order to maintain security and also to avoid inconveniencing the Chicago traveling public, including President John F. Kennedy. In a common pattern, Air Force One would land at a larger area airport, and the President would then take the Marine One helicopter to Meigs Field to avoid the complications of a Secret Service escort via Chicago’s expressways.

“The issue is Daley’s increasingly authoritarian style that brooks no disagreements, legal challenges, negotiations, compromise or any of that messy give-and-take normally associated with democratic government,” the Chicago Tribune editorialized when the airport was suddenly closed. “The signature act of Richard Daley’s 22 years in office was the midnight bulldozing of Meigs Field,” according to Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.[20] “He ruined Meigs because he wanted to, because he could,” columnist John Kass wrote of Daley in the Chicago Tribune.

Today the space is mostly unused as a concert venue and hard to reach park yielding only $55 thousand dollars to city operations. When it was opened as an airport, it contributed between $300 million and $500 million income per year.

Now, when there is a race to produce new types of flying transportation called ‘V-TOL’s” that operate like a large drone or small helicopter, already in use in some places and the explosion of small jet aircraft travel, including ‘shared ride’ services, this airport could be exactly the facility that a growing modern city needs. We have seen the proliferation of tourist helicopter services in the past few years that have needed to be based as far away from the lakefront tourist district as Roosevelt road and Ashland. Clearly, the lakefront airport would increase this usage by both tourists and business people.

I propose the restoration of this important third airport with planned enhancements for 21st century personal air travel and much needed revenue source.

Source : https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/m … 9-election