John Thompson submitted this photo and note: “On the anniversary of the March 30, 2003, surprise closing of Chicago’s Meigs Field, here’s a photo of my Crusader at the field.”
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I’ve seen numerous captions about Meigs field “closing.” It wasn’t closed at all; it was absconded by a mayor who used 9/11 as cover for preventative terror strikes in Chicago by aircraft. When in-fact, as gratitude for delivering Chicago votes, President Clinton promised boodles of federal dollars to make the land into a park where casino’s and handicapped could recreate. All Mayor Richard Daly needed was the cover of darkness and complicit city workers who would illegally destroy a federal runway, making the land unusable to inbound and trapped aircraft parked their overnight. To the best of my knowledge, no charges were ever brought.
John Thompson’s photo brought back some memories. As a young Navy tower controller at NAS Glenview (NBU) in the early 1970’s, I often deconflicted VFR civilian flights passing through the NAS Glenview airport traffic area (as named before the current, standardized system of airspace classification (Classes A, B, C, D, E, and G) was implemented by the FAA in September 1993). The vast majority of these flights were either southbound from Palwaukee Airport (PWK) (now Chicago Executive Airport) in Wheeling, Illinois en route to Meigs Field in Downtown Chicago or northbound from Meigs to Palwaukee. NAS Glenview and Palwaukee Airport were less than 5 miles apart, and as such standard 5-miles radius airport traffic areas (now Class D airspace) for each airfield was not possible. A north-south segment of Interstate I-294 (east of Palwaukee, west of NAS Glenview) as negotiated by Letter of Agreement served as the boundary of the contiguous airport traffic areas. NAS Glenview was operational from 1937 to 1995. The 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) identified NAS Glenview for closure no later than 30 September 1995, along with corresponding inactivation or transfer of its assigned squadrons and other units.
Commander Bruce Herman, US Navy (Retired)
Active Duty 1970-2003