Chicago Midway Airport (KMDW) v1.5
VERSION 1.5 UPDATE 1/3/2021 : Some jetways were not showing up in user’s sims. This has been fixed now by using only stock Asobo jetways.
Please delete Version 1 , and download this version instead, into your ‘Community’ folder.
INTRODUCTION TO CHICAGO MIDWAY AIRPORT – KMDW
Chicago Midway airport is the second largest airport serving the Chicago area, and is located in the midwestern state of Illinois, USA. Originally named Chicago Air Park, it was originally built in 1923. In July 1949, the airport was renamed after the World War II battle of Midway .
Midway airport covers one square mile ( one whole city block), and has five runways. Midway is tightly surrounded by buildings and other residential development on all four sides, so the landing thresholds of the runways are displaced to provide obstacle clearance. A boundary wall surrounds the whole one square mile of airport from the adjacent streets and houses, which are just a few yards from the main runways.
This makes Midway airport a challenging airport to fly into and take off from, where piloting skills have to be precise and there is no room for error. Larger aircraft like the Boeing 747 or 787 do not fly from this airport.
It is a major hub for Southwest airlines, so the main Commercial aircraft to fly out of this airport is the Boeing 737.
Default MSFS2020 only showed this as very drab , generic airport, even though this is the second busiest airport in Chicago, and is great fun to fly out of and land into, because of how landlocked it is on all 4 sides.
I have used the SDK to edit the default airport and really bring it to life.
Main Features :
1. Properly named amd numbered Terminals and Gates, with Apron markings for all gates, making it easier to taxi to the right gate. Pilots, tarmac workers are at various locations, working or walking around the aprons, to add a sense of incredible realism.
2. Hand crafted aprons, taxiways, runway textures, specially matched to actual photographs of airports. The control tower is scaled down from the oversized generic one, and look a bit more like the actual control tower at Midway.
3. The roads around the airport have been lit up and have moving traffic, including cars, buses, to recreate how it feels like when coming in to land or just after taking off and clearing the airport boundary. Traffic patterns are also more fun!
4. Amazing new night lighting that adds an atmospheric touch to flying at night. Lit up concourses, aprons, and taxiway paths add to the realism.
5. All taxiways have their original names, based on the actual Airport diagram.
6. KMDW Airport Diagram included as a pdf file, to navigate your way around the aprons/ concourses and taxiways , in real life!
7. All the buildings, parking lots have been lovingly recreated with incredible detail, including full parking lots, fences of different types, security gates, airport vehicles, all based on actual satellite photos of KMDW , and my personal visits around the airport ( since i live in the Chicago area, minutes from the airport.
Limitations :
1. I have yet to learn how to create 3d buildings in blender, so the buildings are the closes approximation in shape and size, but not the exact, similar as the ones at KMDW . Hopefull in a future upgrade i will be able to do that.
2. The runways are a few feet lower than the actual airport elevation of 620 feet. All runways have a slight slope from the western edge, sloping down about 9 feet to the Eastern edge. I could not recreate it in the SDK ( as of yet) . But while flying, you will barely tell the difference.
3. I was not able to set it up so that all GA aircraft use Runway 31 Left ( which they do in real life). While using the SDK, there does not seem to be anyway of having GA aircraft avoid the very large runways meant for Commercial airliners only.
4. I could not show actual Southwest Boeing 737 AI traffic, as this feature does not seem to be able to be set up using the SDK. So you will just see a mix of generic AI traffic at the gates.
INSTALLATION :
Copy the ‘Chicago-Midway’ folder into your MSFS2020 Community folder. Thats it!
If you like this airport , i would greatly appreciate a donation to paypal, since i feel this airport is almost at the detail level of what i have seen in the marketplace. I would request a donation of $9 if you wish. (To make it worth the hundreds of hours i spent on this, not to mention the irritated looks bickerings of my wife getting upset i spent so much time in the sim ( in the SDK!!) .
But any donation level is greatly appreciated.
Thank you !
Adnan Arif
