American Airlines strongly supports the bold and exciting plan put forward by Mayor Richard Daley to reconfigure and modernize O’Hare International Airport. O’Hare is the most important hub in the American air transport system. The delays that result from bad weather conditions in Chicago affect the entire country, causing thousands of hours of lost productivity and costing untold millions of dollars. The addition of one new runway and the reconfiguration of three others will modernize O’Hare and remake it up to present day standards such as what we see at Dallas/Fort Worth and Atlanta’s Hartsfield airports. The new parallel configuration will replace the crisscross pattern that goes back to the early 1940s when the original runways were set up for the Douglas wartime facility. In addition to greatly enhancing the air traffic flow in the United States, the mayor’s plan, when completed, will provide much better ground access to O’Hare. The new western access also will greatly benefit DuPage travelers and should enhance economic development opportunities.
