Thank you for the Tribune’s excellent recent series on the challenges facing the nation’s air-transportation system (“Gateway to Gridlock” and the more recent Business section series on airports). Because your series focused heavily on scheduled commercial traffic, many do not realize that non-scheduled general aviation (corporate, charter and other private traffic) accounts for far more flights than the airlines do in the U.S.–about 40 million flights, out of a total of 52 million flights nationally.
Because these flights generally choose the closest airport to their destinations, it is important to maintain a strong network of close-in general aviation “reliever” airports–airports like Chicago’s downtown Meigs Field–to avoid additional overcrowding at commercial airports like O’Hare and Midway.
Meigs Field handles more than 40,000 operations annually, more than 85 percent of which are business- or convention-related.
With modest improvements in policies and facilities, it could handle considerably more.
By doing so, it would help to relieve traffic at Midway and O’Hare, traffic that otherwise would add to the growing congestion and delays. Every air traveler to or from Chicago benefits from the existence of airports like Meigs Field.
