[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[LibertyWoman]

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.

[dznutz]

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.

[discostu]

Reversing the river (by “unknown” culprits) was the most Chicago thing ever. Meigs was good, but REAL Chicago you don’t get caught.

[poinq]

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.

[Bonemaker]

Maggie Daley didn't like the airplanes.

[Songcraft]

I wonder if that bulldozer demolition crew is still available.


     

[oldtech]

I got to fly in & out of there once with my boss who was the pilot. This was in the mid-70s. Handy little airfield that I knew nothing about previous to that time. From the air, the first-time landing there & it looked the size of a postage stamp.