Chicago Executive Airport

Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) is a general aviation reliever airport at 1020 South Plant Road in Wheeling, Illinois, close to Interstate 94 and serving corporate travellers and recreational flyers headed for downtown Chicago and the north and west suburbs. It is owned jointly by the City of Prospect Heights and the Village of Wheeling under an intergovernmental cooperative agreement and managed with the guidance of an advisory board of directors drawn from both municipalities. The airport marked its centennial in 2026.

Facts

• Home to 325 aircraft, including 57 corporate jets
• Three active runways on more than 412 acres
• Fourth busiest airport in Illinois and one of the nation's busiest relievers, taking traffic from O'Hare International
• Open 24 hours a day year round; the FAA-staffed control tower, commissioned in 1997, operates from 6 a.m. on weekdays (7 a.m. at weekends) until 10 p.m.
• Users include private aircraft owners, flight schools, businesses that base company aircraft at the field, and fixed base operators offering aircraft maintenance and cleaning

History

Founded in 1926 as Gauthier's Flying Field, a 40-acre grass strip with dirt runways, the airport was dedicated as Swallow Airplane Field by brothers Frank and Pete Barchard and incorporated as Pal-Waukee Air Port in November 1928. Priester Aviation Service bought it in 1953 and developed it for 33 years, adding runway lighting and a DC-3 hangar in 1954, four runways by 1959, a VOR approach in 1961, a parallel taxiway and ILS installation in 1974 and new corporate hangars. On 26 December 1986 Prospect Heights and Wheeling purchased Palwaukee with FAA and state funding, making it a public airport. Later projects relocated two arterial roads and a drainage ditch outside the runway safety area, and Priester built three further corporate hangars from 1997 and the largest hangar to date in 2000. The name changed to Chicago Executive Airport on 17 October 2006, and modernisation of runways, taxiways and aprons to federal standards continues.

Community

The airport publishes public meeting schedules, an avigation easement purchase option, FAA noise comment links, an ARFF standby request form and airport spotlight profiles of local people.

Shows

Chicago Executive Airport appears in the exhibitor lists of the NBAA Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference 2027, NBAA-BACE 2026 and NBAA-BACE 2027.

Contact

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