Miller Urges Leaders to Advance South Suburban Airport After FAA Caps O’Hare Flights (Cook County, IL) – Cook County Commissioner and congressional candidate Donna Miller is urging state and local leaders to revive long-delayed plans for a South Suburban Airport following a federal decision to limit flights at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Speaking at a news conference at her campaign office last week, Miller said the Federal Aviation Administration’s move to cap flights at O’Hare underscores the region’s need for a second major airport to handle growing air traffic.
“All the modernization and expansion in the world cannot defy the law of physics—two planes cannot be in the same space at the same time,” Miller said.
The FAA recently announced plans to limit flight operations at O’Hare through the summer 2026 scheduling season to keep traffic manageable. According to federal officials, airlines proposed daily operations that would exceed 3,080 flights, significantly higher than last year’s schedule of about 2,680 flights.
To reduce strain on runways, terminals and air traffic control systems, the FAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation are considering capping operations at about 2,800 flights on peak days.
Miller, who is running for Congress in Illinois’ 2nd District and has lived in the south suburbs for nearly three decades, said the situation reflects decades of inaction on building a new airport in the region.
“The decision to cut flights at O’Hare Airport is decades in the making,” Miller said. “For years, those of us who support a South Suburban Airport have repeated the FAA’s advice to capture the region’s growing air capacity by building another airport.”
She argued that if federal warnings had been followed more than 30 years ago, officials might not now be facing restrictions at what is widely considered one of the world’s busiest airports.
Miller said that if elected to Congress she would continue pushing for the expansion of Bult Field in Peotone into the long-proposed South Suburban Airport.
She also called on Gov. JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and municipal leaders in the south suburbs to form a regional authority to begin planning a fully operational airport. Miller suggested the project could move forward through a public-private partnership in which the state would serve as landlord and a private developer would manage construction and operations.
“Let’s not squander this opportunity,” Miller said. “Let’s turn a potential problem into a permanent solution.”
The Lynwood resident said the region’s failure to move forward with the airport—whether as a cargo hub, passenger airport or both—has contributed to economic underperformance in Chicago and across Illinois.
Miller pointed to a recent study from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute estimating that a cargo-focused airport in the south suburbs could create roughly 6,300 jobs.
She added that pairing the airport with other infrastructure and development projects—including the proposed PsiQuantum campus, extending the CTA Red Line, building highway access to the site and completing a five-mile Metra rail extension from Governors State University to the airport—could help revitalize the Chicago Southland.
“This is the formula for revitalizing the region,” Miller said. “We have the opportunity to build something transformative for the south suburbs.”
Miller Urges Leaders to Advance South Suburban Airport After FAA Caps O’Hare Flights
