By Don Babwin
The Associated Press
Chicago – The Federal Aviation Administration gave the go-ahead Friday for a $15 billion expansion of O’Hare Airport, a project that could ease some of the nation’s worst flight delays but cost 2,600 people their homes.
The project – championed for years by Mayor Richard M. Daley – calls for new and reconfigured runways, another terminal and parking for oversized planes.
“O’Hare is now cleared for takeoff,” FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said in Washington.
The city had been expecting final approval and had equipment already in place and ready to begin work.
One opponent immediately filed an emergency request with the FAA to halt construction.
Critics have fought the project for years because it will require the razing of nearly 500 homes and the relocating of nearly 200 businesses and a cemetery in the suburbs of Bensenville, Des Plaines and Elk Grove Village.
The FAA said the expansion would let O’Hare handle 1.2 million landings and takeoffs a year, 300,000 more than now. Average delays would go from 17.1 minutes to 5.8 minutes, according to agency projections. And it said safety would increase because the new layout would cut in half the number of planes crossing open runways.
The eight-year plan calls for reconfiguring the intersecting runways so that there are six parallel and two diagonal runways.
The first runway would open in 2007.
