Flights at Chicago Midway resume after virus fears shut tower

Flights to Chicago’s Midway Airport resumed Tuesday evening, ending a temporary halt that occurred after technicians who work in the air-traffic control tower tested positive for the Covid-19 virus.

The Federal Aviation Administration had blocked flights departing from other airports to Midway as it switched control to a nearby air-traffic facility, according to an agency flight-tracking website. The restriction was lifted at about 6 p.m. local time.

There were 184 arrivals and departures canceled at Midway, almost 30% of all flights and the most for any U.S. airport, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.

The tower remained closed 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.

Flights are allowed to land at airports without a control tower under FAA rules that require pilots to announce themselves over a common radio frequency. Typically, only one arrival or departure is allowed at a time, severely reducing capacity.

A nearby air-traffic facility that oversees flights in the Chicago region took over some of the duties that the Midway tower would have performed.

Even after the halt was lifted, the flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed almost no flight activity at Midway, a stark contrast to the arrivals and departures at nearby O’Hare International.

The FAA’s controllers have contingency plans for halting flights throughout the aviation system and can track aircraft and communicate with them from other nearby facilities.

Earlier Tuesday, the FAA said three technicians who work at the control tower had tested positive for the virus. Technicians perform maintenance on electrical equipment at air-traffic facilities and do not guide aircraft.