The most Chicago thing ever happened 20 years ago — an airport was bulldozed overnight

WBEZ CHICAGO ^ | Mar 27, 2023 | By Courtney Kueppers

[KeyLargo]

The most Chicago thing ever happened 20 years ago — an airport was bulldozed overnight

Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley boldly showed how he ran the city the night he ordered the destruction of Meigs Field on Northerly Island. When the sun came up over Chicago on March 31, 2003, it shone down on six large Xs that were bulldozed overnight into the runway of a small downtown airport.

Under the cover of darkness, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley made it clear who ran the city when he ordered the destruction of Meigs Field on Northerly Island without alerting the City Council, the statehouse or the Federal Aviation Administration. The former airport is now a park, which the mayor had wanted for years.

Daley defended the move the next day by citing safety concerns and told reporters it was a risk to have planes that close to skyscrapers in a post-9/11 world.

[KeyLargo]

“It was seen as a dictatorial ploy by the mayor to get his way,” said former Ald. Dick Simpson, who is now a political science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago. “This was the first big move of simply doing what he wanted to do.”

The destruction of Meigs was a brash stunt that epitomizes Chicago politics. Simpson equates bulldozing Meigs with similarly “autocratic” schemes greenlit by Daley’s father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, such as ordering police to maintain law and order among protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, resulting in violent clashes.

Daley closed Meigs without warning, leaving planes stranded. Brian Jackson / Chicago Sun-Times

Overnight, he ordered crews to bulldoze Meigs Field’s runway and make X-shaped gorges on the tarmac to ensure no flights could operate. The decision left dozens of aircraft stranded at the airport since it was still in operation the day before.

[Signalman]

Meigs Field was the “home airport” for many of the earlier versions of Sublogic, and Microsoft Flight Simulator (FS).

When you launched FS on your PC, your plane would be sitting on runway 36 at Meigs.

[Paladin2]

Who paid to extract the stranded planes?

[hanamizu]

Was the city required to compensate the owners of the planes stranded at Meigs?

[Paladin2]

N2928X
Landed over a month ago

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N2928X

[ChessExpert]

“Simpson equates bulldozing Meigs with similarly “autocratic” schemes greenlit by Daley’s father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, such as ordering police to maintain law and order among protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, resulting in violent clashes.”

Might as well say that Simpson equates 2 with 4.

[july4thfreedomfoundation]

Daly’s bitch wife is the one who wanted to turn the airport into a park, and her putrid, corrupt husband granted her wish.

[Freedom4US]

I caught that too, nice bit of revisionist wankery there. Daley sr was a Democrat - but he understood that a nutbar with a lit Molotov cocktail is a dangerous thing. I recall reading an account of the ‘68 convention written by a cop who was there. It was very, very much different than the Time-Life version everybody has been operating with.

[Mean Daddy]

Out of my home office window, I can see planes take off from a small regional airport. They get small private jets a handful of times a week and I use the software to see who’s coming and going. They also have a P51 housed there and when it takes off, it goes. It goes all over the country to various show for vintage flights.

[scrabblehack]

Is Midway still active?

[budj]

"...Daley boldly showed how he ran the city..."

He thought he4 controlled the FAA, too, but he didn't. The controllers who worked Meigs Field all got laid off after dipwaDaley assured them they wouldn't.

[Carriage Hill]

His daddy, Richard J, did much worse when he and the Mafia owned Chi-Congo. My Family lived in the NW Suburb of Arlington Heights, and we noted the “changes” almost on a daily basis. We moved too NJ in 1967, and the 1968 Riots changed everything for the power structure.

[Tacrolimus1mg]

I never knew that. I played MFS as a kid. Interesting.

[ConservativeMind]

I played the SubLogic Flight Simulator on multiple computers.

It was simply wonderful, at that time.

[mo]

He got away with it without penalty...and now we have Lets Go Brandon to deal with...

[SaveFerris]

Wow

[DesertRhino]

A cool little historic airport. Corrupt Chicago trash killed it.

[Lockbar]

Anything the governemnt does in the middle of the night without warning is being done because its CRIMINAL.

[oldplayer]

I’m STILL pissed off about it. I use it as example “A” of how my state should be able to tell the Feds to “stick it” on all things we don’t want to do. For instance: 55-mph limit, electric cars, lawnmowers, .08 DUI lower limit, etc.

They did this with ABSOLUTELY NO PENALTY. If I’d been President, O’Hare Airport would have been closed immediately thereafter.

Santa Monica is following suit. San Jose will soon follow.

[protoconservative]

The aircraft trapped at the field were allowed to fly off the taxiway a few days later. As it was a DC-3 Airport, the taxiways were 45 feet wide and full length of the demolished runways. As metro airports will never be built again, we will never know what industry daily preempted in having his shitfight with ryan.