Another O'Hare runway mishap: City worker drove in front of landing jetliner

The area in red is where a city worker at O'Hare Airport was driving a city vehicle on a runway as an American Airlines jetliner was landing. | Brian Ernst / Sun-Times


With construction underway on another O’Hare Airport runway, the Chicago Department of Aviation has been taking extra steps to keep contractors unfamiliar with the airfield’s labyrinthine layout of takeoff and landing strips, taxiways and tunnels from accidentally driving onto where planes are arriving or departing.

Among the safety measures: stationing city workers in trucks at key airfield intersections to block ground vehicles from blundering onto an active runway.

One of the workers assigned to ensure runway safety was involved in a runway mishap on April 2, when he drove a city vehicle onto a runway as an American Airlines jetliner was landing. Officials say the plane was slowing, and no one was hurt.

But it was another in a string of potentially serious runway mishaps at O’Hare. It happened days after the Chicago Sun-Times reported there have been 62 runway “incursions” in fiscal years 2017 and 2018 and so far in 2019.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ohare-airport-runway-incursions-american-airlines-chicago-aviation-department/

Perhaps it could be tied into this thread?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10494619