Master keys for O’Hare Airport security access were lost, costing city in ‘five figures’

It looks like something you’d borrow from the counter of a gas station to get into the bathroom around back — a set of keys dangling from a bulky piece of wood.

But this key set doesn’t lead to a dingy toilet, leaky sink and condom machine. It provides almost total access to O’Hare Airport. These keys lock and unlock perimeter fences and other key entry points.

There are only a handful of these clusters of master keys. They’re kept by Chicago Department of Aviation security officers who patrol the grounds, a line of defense against terrorists and trespassers. So they’re supposed to be closely guarded.

But one of the sets went missing in April and never was found, even with the FBI and Chicago Police Department called in, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The aviation security officer who reported losing the keys was grilled, then fired — a rare punishment because the city’s union contracts typically protect city employees at O’Hare from serious disciplinary action even after alarming incidents like runway breaches, the Sun-Times previously has reported.

Officials with the aviation department — the city agency that runs O’Hare and also Midway Airport — say that, despite the loss of the keys, security at O’Hare wasn’t compromised because they instituted an “elevated security posture,” with additional security officers at critical “access points” until all of the locks and keys were replaced.

“There was no unauthorized entry, no breaches,” says Andrew Velasquez, Chicago’s managing deputy aviation commissioner for safety and security.

But city officials are at a loss to explain what happened to the keys, which were tethered to the bulky piece of wood in an effort to keep them from getting misplaced.

The security officer who lost the keys and was fired was working a night shift when they disappeared.

“He basically said when he went to retrieve the keys they were not in the position he left them” in his city-issued vehicle at O’Hare, according to Velasquez.

The officer had spent at least part of his work hours in the city vehicle with a supervisor on the airfield, officials say. The supervisor was found not to have been at fault and wasn’t disciplined.

After the officer reported losing the keys, Velasquez says, “We immediately dispatched personnel to all of the gates where there could possibly be entry.”

Security officers remained there “24/7” until the locks and keys were replaced, he says. He won’t say how long that took or how many locations were involved.

A source with knowledge of the situation says it took about a month to replace everything.

It cost the city “five figures” to replace the keys and locks, according to Matt McGrath, spokesman for Chicago Aviation Commissioner Jamie Rhee, a top aide to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and now Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

According to the source, the keys granted access to roughly 100 perimeter gates, 150 other gates on the grounds and an “unknown amount” of doors, elevators and washrooms at O’Hare.

The officer’s locker was searched, as were numerous city vehicles on the airfield, to no avail, the source says.

Velasquez says the keys “are tightly controlled . . . Every day, supervisors check on these keys.”

“This is the first time this has happened since I’ve been here,” says Velasquez, who has been in his role for two years.

The security officer was relatively new to the job, still in his probationary period, which made it easier to fire him under union rules, officials say. But they say the man would have been canned anyway because of the seriousness of the situation.

There are about 300 aviation security officers, who aren’t sworn police officers but have some law enforcement powers.

The aviation security unit gained notoriety in 2017 when several of its members boarded a parked United Airlines jet and dragged a passenger, Dr. David Dao, down the aisle and off the oversold plane when he refused to give up his seat for a United employee traveling to Louisville, Kentucky.