Elmhurst residents eager for end of O'Hare rotation test

Sleep-deprived Elmhurst residents near O'Hare International Airport can soon expect some relief from jet noise.

A third overnight runway rotation test meant to better distribute airplane racket over towns around the country's second-busiest airport will end Oct. 14.

Chicago aviation officials and O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission members don't expect any more experiments with weekly runway rotations and, for the immediate future, plan to revert to previous "Fly Quiet" procedures as they analyze data from the three tests.

The voluntary overnight program will once again use a predominantly east-west runway system - welcoming news for towns such as Elmhurst, but a source of frustration for communities such as Bensenville.

The city's aviation department and commission members have to study the results of the three tests, an analysis that could help officials develop an interim overnight flight rotation schedule that would run until a final parallel runway opens on O'Hare's north side in fall 2020.

The Federal Aviation Administration would review the interim plan and seek public input, a process that would "conservatively" take about a year from when the feds receive a proposal from the city, said Christina Drouet, the agency's acting Great Lakes regional administrator.

Ideally, officials wanted to have the interim plan ready for the decommissioning of a diagonal runway in spring 2018, but Drouet said she doesn't think that's realistic.

"I don't think there's enough time for that right now," Drouet told dozens of Elmhurst residents at a forum Tuesday night in city hall.

The third rotation test doesn't include the 15/33 runway that the city will retire next spring. But other diagonal runways are on the 12-week rotation schedule, prompting noise complaints around Elmhurst.

"Every other week we got the traffic that we were getting once a month," Mayor Steven Morley said. "That's why Fly Quiet 3 really was what we considered unfair. It was an unfair distribution."

He and other residents are eager for the end of the test and a return of the old procedures, even if temporary.

"That means we should see a significant reduction in traffic in a week and a half and that should be maintained for at least a year," Morley said.

After the conclusion of the trial run, overnight airplane traffic could still use the 4/22 diagonal runways in certain wind conditions, Drouet said.

"It's not a guarantee that every night is just going to be the east-west runways," she said. "We have to operate safely and sometimes that means using the diagonal runways."

Chicago launched the first runway rotation test in summer 2016 - a groundbreaking regional approach to curtailing nighttime noise.

"We're not aware of any other airport in the country that tries to do that, to share the noise if you will, with different communities, Drouet said.

O'Hare shifted to an east-west, parallel runway system in 2013. On the airfield's north side, a sixth parallel runway and the extension of an existing one are on track to go live in 2020 and 2021, respectively, as part of a modernization project.

"Once the new runway is finished in the fall of 2020, there's an opportunity to do again something more and different with Fly Quiet," Drouet said. "That's a much bigger chore that lies ahead."

• Daily Herald Staff Writer Marni Pyke contributed to this report