Residents Claim Airline 'Crash Pads' Are Good for the Neighborhood

Chuck Sokol has a strong opinion about pilots who buy homes on his block to rent as "crash pads" for other pilots and flight attendants.

"It's the greatest thing to ever happen to the neighborhood. Damn right," said the 77-year-old retiree who has lived on the 6000 block of South Kilpatrick for 40 years.

"They don't own cars. There's never more than two or three people there at one time. The city should look the other way."

It's not, though. City Hall is cracking down on the crash pads, as the pilots call them, writing 31 violations in the past three months at homes within a mile of Midway.

It's not sitting well with neighbors and those crashing there. They argue the pads are not disruptive, unsafe or even crowded. The pads are homes rented to airline workers looking to save cash when they have to spend the night in Chicago. City officials said they found some homes with four sets of bunk beds, and ticketed owners for running illegal transitional shelters.

But although 20 people might pay rent at one home, users say rarely are more than three people there together.

"They come here and they're gone," said John Fitzgerald, who rents the upstairs of his Kilpatrick home to Southwest Airlines flight attendant Carol Shannon of Texas.

Shannon is there only part of the month and lets four colleagues share the space at other times.

"It's like my home away from home," she said. "You can't stay at a hotel. You can't afford that."

Crash pads are not new, pilots say. You can find them near most any airport where flight crews are based. "Out at O'Hare, there are crash pads all along Cumberland," said a pilot in a Kilpatrick crash pad who wouldn't give his name.

Here's how they're used: If a pilot is based out of Chicago but lives in Cleveland, he may need to be here for early flights a few days a month. He'll fly into Chicago the night before and stay at the crash pad, which costs about $150 a month.

There's no per diem for "commuting" from your home to your base, so paying for a crash pad saves out-of-pocket expenses. The pads are mostly all-male or all-female, and not exactly "Animal House," workers said. "It's not a college dorm where people are there to party," said American Airlines Capt. Denny Breslin. "They're there to rest for their trip."

Pilots do acknowledge that some pads are rowdier than others.

MAXjet Capt. George Coulthard, who has stayed at crash pads but now opts for a hotel, said the pads are "part of the color" of the business. And they're better than sleeping in an airport crew room, he said.

But, as one pilot noted, "You don't want to be there. It sucks. It's like a flophouse."

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