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Chicago cracks down on Midway 'crash pads'
April 6, 2007
By Fran Spielman Special to the Daily Southtown
Pilots and flight attendants will have to find a new place to "crash" during Midway Airport layovers.
City hall has lowered the boom on dozens of illegal "crash pads" around the Southwest Side airport. Crash pads, as pilots call them, are homes, two-flats and three-flats that rent furnished rooms to pilots and flight attendants who fly in and out of Midway.
Instead of paying nightly fees for hotel rooms, the airline employees pay $100 to $150 a month for a bunk bed or convertible couch. Some crash pads reportedly house up to 20 people per floor, with living rooms converted into bedrooms. Some building owners even sell residential parking permits to crew members, depriving the city of parking fees at Midway.
Now the city has crashed the party.
Forty inspections were conducted the past three months, resulting in 31 violations to building owners for illegally operating "transitional shelters."
Four openly acknowledged the violations and shut down the crash pads. Twelve offered no response, and their cases will be pursued in court -- with the landlords facing fines as high as $1,000 a day.
Five other owners were charged with illegal conversions -- residential units illegally carved into the attic or basement of single-family homes. All of the crash pads were within a mile of Midway Airport.
"Flights are arriving at all hours. You have people coming and going at all hours. It could be a fire risk," city zoning administrator Patty Scudiero said. "In one case, we saw four sets of bunk beds. That's eight people in addition to the owner. The next night, it was another eight."
The city crackdown followed an anonymous written tip from a resident, who included addresses and owners of nearly two dozen crash pads. A Southwest Airlines pilot who lives in South Holland was identified as the owner of nine crash pads. He could not be reached for comment.
Also enclosed in the tip were "solicitation fliers" for crash pads, purportedly with date stamps from the Southwest Inflight Services Department. The tipster claimed Southwest "promotes the use of crash pads and advertises them in crew lounges and orientation sessions."
Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King categorically denied that. Flight attendants have a "bulletin book" to communicate with each other about living arrangements, but "I've never seen a flier. We don't become involved in our employees' living arrangements," King said.
A landlord who rents rooms to pilots at her home in the 6100 block of Keating Avenue said she's not sad to see the end of the crash pads. The woman, who declined to provide her name, said pilots buy up houses in her neighborhood and fill them with dozens of renters.
"Some of these pilots who have bought buildings all over the community have 30 people in a building, and that's not right," she said.
Contributing: Stefano Esposito, Lisa Donovan