Cancellations soar at Chicago midway after virus shuts tower

by Bloomberg Mar 18, 2020

Flights to Chicago’s Midway Airport were severely restricted on Wednesday as the air-traffic tower remained closed due to cleaning for the Covid-19 virus.

Airlines canceled 325 flights into and out of Midway, which was 57% of its operations, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. Three Federal Aviation Administration technicians at the airport tower tested positive for the virus earlier in the week.

Midway remained open, but aircraft were operating under rules that only allow one plane in or out at a time, severely restricting capacity. Incoming flights had been temporarily halted Tuesday.

Separately, an earthquake in Salt Lake City shut that city’s airport. The 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck early Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

The Midway tower remained closed Wednesday to “ensure a safe work environment,” the FAA said in a statement. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association union demanded that the tower be shut down so that it could be “disinfected according to appropriate public health standards,” the union said in a press release.

The union also asked the FAA to coordinate with local health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to test all controllers and technicians at the facility.

In Salt Lake City, the earthquake prompted an evacuation of the airport’s air-traffic control tower and a halt to arrivals and departures, the FAA said in a statement based on a preliminary assessment of the situation.

The terminals and concourses were also evacuated, the airport said in a tweet. A road leading to the airport was opened so that people could be picked up.

Authorities were inspecting runways as arriving flights were diverted to other locations, the FAA said. As of 8:53 a.m. local time, 94 arrivals and departures had been canceled, according to FlightAware.

In both Chicago and Salt Lake City, a nearby air-traffic facility that oversees flights in those regions took over some of the duties that the towers would have performed.