The National Transportation Safety Board expects it will be at least a year before it can explain definitively why Southwest Flight 1248 skidded off a runway’s end at Midway Airport, plowed through a perimeter fence and crushed a car at the corner of 55th Street and Central Avenue. The accident during Thursday night’s snowstorm killed 6-year-old Joshua Woods, who was riding in the car, and injured 10 others.
In the interim, questions about the inherent safety of the 79-year-old Midway Airport will continue to percolate. The airport’s mile-square footprint is far smaller than what federal regulations would require today–even as operations at the airport have soared in recent years.
Pilots have long known that, even in ideal conditions, landing at Midway is tricky. There is little margin for error. The runways are short. Pilots come in fast and low over houses around the airport, hit the runway hard and must immediately engage thrust reversers to slow their aircraft. Just 82 feet separates the end of Runway 31 Center–the only runway in use Thursday night–and the barrier wall that separates the airport from the street. Federal Aviation Administration standards call for a 1,000-foot safety zone beyond a runway. (Only about 100 of the nation’s 400 biggest airports meet that standard.)
Conditions Thursday night were far from ideal. The snow was falling fast and thick, and the landing configuration meant planes were touching down with a 10-mile-per-hour tail wind that sometimes gusted higher. That tail wind increased the runway space planes needed to stop.
Thursday’s accident was the first involving a fatality in Southwest’s 35-year history. It came 33 years to the day after a plane crashed on approach to Midway, killing 45. Both accidents are tragic exceptions to a remarkable safety record at Midway. There have been no other airplane fatalities at Midway in that time frame.
Nevertheless, it’s inevitable that the question will be asked: Is Midway too small, too crowded by its neighbors, too unsafe to operate?
The answer is no in each case. Midway has become economically essential to the city. The airport went from nearly moribund in the 1970s to a thriving home for discount airlines, such as Southwest, attracted to its close-in location and large market. That has spurred economic development around the airport. Coupled with O’Hare, Midway provides Chicago a powerful one-two punch in aviation. Last year nearly 20 million passengers went through Midway’s 43 gates. The city has invested nearly $1 billion into redeveloping the airport to handle more than 300 departures a day.
So Midway is key to the Chicago’s region future, along with an expanded O’Hare and the likely construction of an airport in the south suburbs. There are a number of creative ideas being discussed to make Midway’s runways safer. Bring them on.
