✈️ Last Call at Meigs Field
The skyline, the sim, and the night a mayor bulldozed America’s most beloved runway.
I crossed Lake Michigan low and slow, skimming beneath scattered cumulus in a 172. It was the kind of flight that makes your palms sweat, not from fear, but from reverence. The kind of day when the horizon bleeds into memory.
Chicago rose ahead like a mural: cold glass, steel teeth, sun-glinting water.
And there, outstretched on the shoreline like an invitation that had always been open but never guaranteed—Meigs Field.
A single strip of pavement, a city at your 10 o’clock, and a thousand memories that hadn’t even happened yet. The world’s most famous runway, at least if you ever touched a flight sim in the 80s or 90s.
A few months later, it would be gone.
Not closed.
Not decommissioned.
Destroyed.
🛬 The Myth and the Magic
Meigs was never the busiest airport. It didn’t need to be. It was the soul of general aviation, hidden in plain sight.
Just off downtown, bordered by water and asphalt and the imagination of anyone who’d ever dreamt of slipping the surly bonds — it was more than a runway. It was a rite of passage.
We landed there, refueled, felt like kings. We walked the ramp with the skyline at our back and the lake breeze in our face. It was every childhood fantasy come to life — the airplane, the city, the freedom.
That kind of freedom doesn’t last. Not anymore.
☁️ A Cloud That Shouldn’t Have Been There
We saw it on approach — a lone cumulus cloud, thermaling straight up like a fist from the water.
It wasn’t supposed to be there. The weather was stable. No fronts, no storm cells. But this cloud was climbing fast, alive with convection. We slipped beneath it on final, the kind of maneuver you only attempt when you're certain... and young... and stupid enough to think the atmosphere cares about your plans.
But we made it. Barely.
Touched down smooth.
And just like that, I had arrived at Meigs.
💾 The Runway Built by Bill Gates
The thing about Meigs is, you knew it before you knew it.
If you flew Microsoft Flight Simulator, it was your home airport — literally. From version 2.0 onward, Meigs Field was the default launch point. The sim would boot, your engine would sputter to life, and there you were: Runway 36, ready to throttle forward into your first ever takeoff.
That’s where I learned to fly — virtually, before I ever touched a real yoke.
I learned about crosswinds in that sim.
Learned to respect stall warnings.
Learned that lifting off doesn’t mean staying aloft.
Millions of us did.
And when I finally touched down there for real?
It wasn’t just a landing.
It was a memory made manifest.
🏗️ The Night the Bulldozers Came
On March 30, 2003, in the middle of the night, under no authority and with no warning, Mayor Richard Daley ordered the runway at Meigs Field destroyed.
City crews rolled in with bulldozers around 1:00 a.m. and carved massive "X"s into the asphalt, effectively ending the airport’s life in a single stroke. Sixteen aircraft were trapped on the ramp with nowhere to take off.
The FAA had no idea. Pilots had no warning. America’s most beloved general aviation airport was gone.
Daley’s justification?
“Security concerns.”
A post-9/11 bluff — unprovable, unreviewable, and ultimately, unpunished.
What it really was… was a land grab.
A political vandalism that stole a living symbol of freedom from the aviation community — and from the country.
🧭 A Sense of Loss That Never Left
I didn’t know it would be my last time.
Didn’t take photos.
Didn’t write it down.
I just remember how it felt:
That updraft, rising from the lake like a living thing.
The ripple of heat off the water.
The quiet thrill of slipping in under the weather with the skyline as your wingman.
That runway didn’t belong to Chicago.
It belonged to us.
To everyone who ever spawned in a sim, bought a kneeboard, or buzzed a tower on a dare.
You don’t bulldoze that.
You protect it.
But they didn’t. And now it’s just… gone.
🛫 Meigs Was Never Just Concrete
Some people measure the erosion of liberty in laws passed, or rights curtailed.
Pilots?
We measure it in runways lost.
And Meigs Field wasn’t just a runway. It was our cathedral.
When they tore it up, they didn’t just erase an airport — they erased a part of American aviation’s beating heart.
I was lucky.
I got to land there.
And now, I get to remember.
📣 Were you one of the lucky ones?
If you ever flew into Meigs — in real life, or in Flight Simulator — drop your story in the comments.
Let’s keep this memory aloft.
Because once they bulldoze history, the only thing left…
is the telling.
So what the hell was Dailey’s angle?