Lake in the Hills Airport to open back up on Thursday

The Lake in the Hills Airport is cleared for takeoff.

The airport is set to open back up to pilots on Thursday, wrapping up about two months of construction on its runway.

The airport finalized its plans earlier this week to open up, but the exact time on Thursday it will be made available was not decided as of Wednesday, Airport Manager Michael Peranich said.

Decommissioning the construction site, moving out the equipment and a “quick inspection” will need to take place before things can open back up on Thursday, he said.

“I’m telling all our tenants … Thursday at midday they can start arriving back at the airport,” he said.

Back in August, the airport began a $2.6 million project to reconstruct its 3,800-foot runway and expand it from 50 feet to 75 feet in width. The purpose for the work was to have it better meet standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Widening the runway gives pilots more room to land safely, Peranich said in August.

Other work included grading at the end of the runway, which meant installing different types of dirt and base material, so that the area could sustain a plane going beyond the runway in an emergency landing, Peranich said in August.

Construction for the project was set to begin at the beginning of August, but was delayed by a week due to environmental concerns. Despite this, the project wrapped up on time, as construction crews had until Friday to finish the job, Peranich said.

“There were no major hiccups,” he said. “There were no skeletons in the closet on this one. It was cut and dry.”

One thing still not known is if the project will end up on budget, as Peranich said the construction costs are still being closed out. Almost all the project’s total cost is expected to come from federal money made available due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the remainder, about 0.5%, coming from the village.

It’s expected that it will likely come in on budget or under budget, Peranich said.

Before the most recent work, the last project completed at the airport was in 2016 when a full-length taxiway was created.

The airport is owned and operated by the village and is run within its public works department.

With more than 100 aircrafts based at Lake in the Hills Airport, it has the fifth most aircrafts in the state and sees a traffic count of roughly 34,000 operations per year, Peranich said in August.

The widening of the runway won’t change the types of aircrafts that can fly into the airport, which must weigh less than 26,000 pounds, Peranich said. It could potentially attract more aircrafts because of the additional safety buffer, but Peranich said that’s just speculation.

“It’s not going to be nonstop service to Hong Kong from Lake in the Hills,” Peranich said.