Traffic drops at Gary, other Chicagoland airports

BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com

High gasoline prices and the deepening recession cut air traffic at Gary/Chicago International Airport and others in the Chicago region in 2008.

Landings and takeoffs were down 17 percent at the Gary airport and down about 8 percent overall at the Chicago area's seven largest airports, Federal Aviation Administration data shows.

The record high prices for aviation fuel during the summer had many general aviation pilots keeping their planes parked at the Gary airport, Director Chris Curry said.

Gary airport had 29,494 landings and takeoffs in 2008 as compared to 35,601 in 2007, the FAA data shows.

High ticket prices and the deepening recession also cut into passenger boardings at airports with regularly-scheduled passenger service, such as O'Hare and Midway, Curry said.

"You can go down the whole industry and find all the numbers for the last year have decreased," Curry said. "It's like another version of Sept. 11."

Air traffic nationwide dropped drastically in the months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

FAA data shows Midway Airport's traffic in 2008 dropped to its lowest level since 1997. It saw 266,341 arrivals and departures in 2008, a nearly 13 percent decline from the year before, when traffic amounted to 304,657.

O'Hare saw 881,556 arrivals and departures in 2008. That's a nearly 5 percent drop from the 926,973 recorded the year before.

O'Hare's takeoffs and landings peaked in 2004 at 992,471 and declined each year since, the data shows.

At the Gary airport, Curry said corporate jet travel remains strong, with the Gary Jet Center opening a second hangar in July. The $5 million hangar is just one of a number of new projects completed there in the last several years.

The Associated Press Contributed to this report.