Posted on 04/01/2023 11:38:26 AM PDT by KeyLargo
POS democrat. I wonder how the owners of those planes got them off the island. I didn’t read anything about that in the article.
Look at the flat ground. Don’t really need a runway, especially with a small plane. We’re all trained on soft field take-offs and landings. Inspect the take-off area first so you don’t dive into a ditch taking off. Otherwise, no biggie.
The runway ran parallel to the lakefront. Approach and departure never got close to any “skyscrapers”. What a load.
I can remember doing industrial trade shows at McCormick. Watching the activity on Miegs during lunch breaks was fun.
The pilots had to get FAA permits to take off from the taxiway that was not as yet bulldozed by Richard Daley.
I can imagine if one crashed, what would their insurance do?
It just occurred to me that what that pos Daley did is pretty much of a metaphor of what democrats do to every place they are in charge of.
I was a local GA Flight Instructor in suburban Chicago for 45 years.
When I had a student nearing their final hours of training, I would have them fly over to Meigs, for a break and give them some procedures to operate in an out of the airport safely.
Meigs operators were very accommodating for years, until the city decided to charge pilots a fee for any landings there.
When the control tower operators arrived the next morning for their shift after Daley bulldozed the runway, they were shocked, because in the FAA was not notified of the airport runway destruction in the dead of night.
The max fine the FAA could assess to Daley was a $33,000. fine, which taxpayers paid for.
This isn’t Shortshanks’ only scandal. He turned historic Soldiers Field into a monstrosity, he sold away the rights to parking meter revenues to a private company for 1.6 billion. The company has already made its money back and $500 million more. He sold the rights to the Chicago Skyway Tolls, leasing it out for 99 years for $1.8 billion. He was the bad Daley.
Whenever there were trade shows at McCormick, the airport would be packed with corporate aircraft.
After Daley bulldozed Meigs, corporations boycotted McCormick and took their trade shows and conventions to Las Vegas.
Daley couldn’t care less.
Maggie Daley wanted petunias planted everywhere and the Mayor gladly accommodated her.
Reversing the river (by “unknown” culprits) was the most Chicago thing ever. Meigs was good, but REAL Chicago you don’t get caught.
Yes, Midway is a very active airport.
Recently, there have been some FAA Midway ATC errors, made by Biden woke controllers.
Believe it or not, I was actually near rhe scene of that riot and saw it. My grandfather and I were coming home up Lake Shore Drive rom the Museum of Science and Industry.
If you lived in Chicago you became used to the quarterly news report of a crash at Meigs Field. The airport was stupid. There were no hangers, almost no buildings at all. The airport was in a horrible place forcing planes to fly along the shoreline of lake Michigan taking the brunt of the windy city. Even when planes landed safely, planes were damaged by the high winds.
There were numerous other airports close to Chicago. But politicians who lived in Chicago and worked in Springfield liked the airport. And they invented state laws to keep it open. Daley decided it was stupid and expensive. So he handled the situation at night, before a new law and fake news coverage could get started. They did have a conniption. Even this story 20 years later shows how much the rich and political hated this move. But the city never missed it. The ten or so planes that landed at Meigs went to another Chicago small airport and life went on. I do miss the news reports of planes crashing into Lake Michigan.
This isn’t Shortshanks’ only scandal. He turned historic Soldiers Field into a monstrosity, he sold away the rights to parking meter revenues to a private company for 1.6 billion. The company has already made its money back and $500 million more. He sold the rights to the Chicago Skyway Tolls, leasing it out for 99 years for $1.8 billion. He was the bad Daley.
The Skyway was operating for forty seven years before it was sold, were they selling bond for twenty three years before the Skyway was built?
Revenue wasn’t generated just by “lazy” meter maids writing tickets to expired meters, it is mostly generated by drivers feeding the meters. You can’t blame the city politicians mismanagement on “lazy” meter maids. Daley was a terrible, communist loving mayor. His father is rolling in his grave.
I suppose that unloaded, into a stiff wind, the taxiway could be used with ease.
He should be in jail, like all democrats and many republicans. Maybe if Daley didn’t use the city pension funds as his piggy bank and made the required contributions, he wouldn’t have had to sell off city assets. He gambled and lost with those funds, and was ordered by a judge to contribute back into the funds what he “borrowed”.
I don’t know about that. Back in the day, I flew a commuter airliner ( be-99) in and out of there several times a day. I even flew a Learjet 35 into Meigs. Rick groups flew in there for their shows. ( I saw The Grateful Dead disembark. )
Meigs brought in a lot of people for the convenience of being right down town.
Destroying the airport probably cost the local economy millions of lost dollars.
I remember...and still have.. the original MS Flight Simulator from the early 1980’s. It was magic.
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