City employees blamed for three runway 'incursions' at O'Hare Airport over the last year
Four municipal workers in Chicago have been disciplined or ticketed for three incidents over the last year in which they accidentally breached active runways at O’Hare Airport with their ground vehicles, newly obtained records show.
No injuries or crashes occurred. But in one of the mishaps, a city worker’s mistake in driving onto a runway forced an airplane that was about to land to abort touchdown, according to the records from the Chicago Department of Aviation, the arm of City Hall that runs O’Hare and Midway airports.
That incident, which occurred April 21, 2024, involved a city vehicle entering Runway 10C/28C from a taxiway “without ATC permission,” city records say, referring to O’Hare’s air traffic controllers who oversee movement on and near the airfield.
The city vehicle “proceeded west on Runway 10C/28C up to Taxiway F before turning around and heading east to Taxiway HH and thereafter exited the runway,” records show.
What’s called the Airport Movement Area Safety System “alarmed,” signaling to controllers there was an “unauthorized vehicle on the runway,” which is one of several east-west strips on the southern side of O’Hare.
Controllers then ordered a flight by Envoy Air, an American Airlines affiliate, that was less than a mile out and preparing to land to “go around,” meaning abruptly cancel the landing and circle back, according to records. Controllers “attempted to contact” the driver of the city truck to no avail, records show.
The jet, arriving from Houston, appeared to be less than a minute from touching down, and likely was carrying fewer than 80 passengers based on its size.
When confronted about the misstep, the city driver initially would not give a formal statement, instead indicating “he will (do so) tomorrow with union rep,” records show.
Locations of O’Hare incursions
He received what’s essentially a traffic citation as well as a five-day unpaid suspension for, among other things, “conduct involving job performance or substandard work performance.”
An aviation department supervisor told an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration — the agency regulating U.S. airports, airlines and airspace — that “our investigation did not find that the airport's ground vehicle procedures need to be revised to prevent future vehicle deviations,” records show.
But, the aviation supervisor also said the incident would “be included in ongoing studies regarding surface incidents and runway incursions that are being developed” by the city agency.
The incident came months before a near-collision at Midway on Feb. 25 involving an aircraft lumbering onto a runway where a Southwest Airlines jet was about to land.
And it was among roughly two dozen total incursions at O’Hare in 2024, with many of them appearing to be the fault of pilots, according to an FAA database.
Two incursions were blamed on city workers in each of the following years: 2023, 2022 and 2021. In 2020, there were five runway mishaps involving city employees, according to a city aviation department spokesman who added, “Safety is the top priority at the airport,” with each incident taken seriously.
Even so, with thousands of people “certified to drive on O’Hare’s airfield, it’s a small subset of problems that you’re talking about here.”
The FAA database reports two runway incursions at O’Hare so far in 2025, but city workers didn’t appear to be involved.
Other documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times reveal another city employee was hit with a two-day unpaid suspension following an incursion on July 2, 2024, on an angled strip known as Runway 4R/22L spanning more than 8,000 feet in the southeast corner of O’Hare.
The runway had been closed for a routine inspection, but after it reopened, neither the employee nor a colleague being trained by him in a city vehicle checked in to see if that stretch was accessible.
Records show their vehicle proceeded northeast "on Runway 4R/22L up to the midpoint of the runway” before “turning around and heading back [southwest] bound to Taxiway Y3.”
“At the time of the incident Runway 4R/22L was open but not in use by ATC. No air traffic was affected because of this incident.”
Drivers are required to contact controllers “to confirm the status of a runway or get approval . . . each time runway access is needed,” records show.
The trainee was ticketed but not disciplined.
Another incident, on Jan. 23, 2024, involved a city worker driving into an area that was restricted around the time a flight was cleared to land nearby. He was given a reprimand.
The city workers involved in the three 2024 incursions are members of either the Teamsters or the Laborers unions, neither of which immediately responded to questions. Their labor contracts with City Hall call for “progressive discipline” in such instances.
None of them had prior runway violations, the aviation spokesman said.
A fourth incident in 2024 involved a city vehicle rolling into a runway safety zone while helping a tug crew get to a disabled 747. However, it was later determined not to be a violation.