DAVID FIELD / WASHINGTON DC
A senior Democrat is pushing a bill limiting state veto powers over airport expansion
The long-running battle between the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois over expansion of O'Hare Airport, which is owned by the city, has moved to the national stage with Congress threatening to strip the state of its power to block airport growth.
The senior Democrat on the House Aviation Subcommittee, William Lipinski from Chicago, intends to push a bill limiting a state's veto power over growth at key hub cities. Lipinski made it clear that he intends the measure to apply to more hubs than just O'Hare. His action, which has backing from 35 other representatives, clearly signals that the federal government may step in where it finds local opposition to what it sees as vital expansion.
The city's $6 billion plan would add an eighth O'Hare runway and reconfigure and extend some of the existing runways - in effect, giving the airport a total of six pairs of east-west runways and two diagonal runways.
United has backed the move and American Airlines chairman Don Carty told Lipinski: "The stakes are far too high to allow the expansion of O'Hare or any other critical airport to be held hostage by local politics."
O'Hare is at or above capacity for 3.5h a day during visual flight rules (VFR) conditions, and slot limitations there now apply only in the afternoon under a Congressionally mandated phase-out of landing slot rules. Under Chicago's proposed 15 year expansion, O'Hare capacity will increase from 900,000 annual operations to 1.6 million.
The growth of O'Hare has been stymied for years by local opponents, who stand to lose about 500 homes, and from backers of a new airport proposed by the state at Peotone, south of the city. Lipinski and other backers of the expansion deny they are trying to block construction of what would be, after O'Hare and Midway, Chicago's third airport.
The Peotone site is strongly opposed by the major airlines, which see it as a job-creation project. The Federal Aviation Administration has made the proposed Peotone airport eligible for possible future funding. Environmental concerns and the effect on property prices has also led some Chicago area Congress members to back Peotone.
Source: Flight International
