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.
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.