O'Hare Airport, which saw a decline in military operations aftershuttering its Air National Guard base two years ago, is seeing aresurgence in military flights.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--which sparked tighter security inthe skies and at airports around the nation--are behind the increase,said Chicago Aviation Department spokeswoman Monique Bond.
In September, O'Hare handled 259 military flights, according tothe Federal Aviation Administration. In October, the most recentmonth figures available, O'Hare handled 77 military flights.
"With this heightened alert, these numbers could potentiallyremain at the same level," Bond said.
In 2000, and for the first eight months of 2001, the airport neverhandled more than 37 military flights a month. Often, there werefewer than a dozen out of roughly 70,000 to 80,000 total monthlyoperations, most of which were commercial airline flights.
The FAA's figures typically refer to takeoffs and landings, butsome of the military operations may involve flights that were inO'Hare's airspace and communicated with O'Hare's air trafficcontrollers but didn't touch down, so-called "overflights," officialssaid.
Fighter jets, for instance, have escorted commercial jetliners toO'Hare but didn't land there, officials said.
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