Accessing the Loyola University Medical Center Heliport for Flight Planning
Most people trying to figure out how to work with the Loyola University Medical Center Heliport run into the same wall pretty fast. It is not a published airport with a standard approach plate or a charted arrival procedure. It is a hospital heliport on private property, which means the usual filing systems do not quite apply. I spent a few years coordinating patient transfers through the Chicago O'Hare area, and this was one of the places that tripped me up more than a few times. The heliport identifier is I80. It sits on the grounds of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois, just west of Chicago. You will find it at approximately 41°51'48"N latitude and 087°51'00"W longitude. The elevation is roughly 612 feet MSL. It is a hospital pad, so the primary function is medical air ambulance operations, not general aviation traffic. If you are a flight dispatcher or a pilot planning to work with this facility, you need to understand that standard approaches do not exist here. The communication frequency is typically routed through the hospital's own radio system or the coordinating hospital flight nurse. You will usually coordinate through AMREF or another air ambulance service that has an established relationship with Loyola. Trying to walk up and land there without prior coordination will not work. The hospital security will have their own procedures, and the flight crew on the ground will not be expecting you.
One thing that catches people off guard is that Loyola does not publish a dedicated charted heliport diagram in the usual FAA orjeopardy publications. You can find basic coordinates in the Chart Supplement, but if you are doing a detailed flight plan with runway length calculations or obstacle clearance analysis, you are going to need to get the actual pad dimensions from the hospital directly or through the air ambulance operator that uses it routinely. I once had a pilot try to file a flight plan assuming a certain pad orientation and wind calculation, only to find out the actual usable pad area was smaller than the chart implied because of the building overhang and ground-level obstacles on the north side. He had to make a last-minute decision to divert to a nearby facility. It cost time and, in a medical evacuation situation, that matters. Here is the practical workflow. First, confirm whether the air ambulance service you are working with actually has current access to the Loyola University Medical Center Heliport. Policies change. Hospital security zones shift. What worked two years ago might require a completely different call chain today. Second, get the correct contact number for the hospital's critical care transport team. Do not rely on the general switchboard. Third, coordinate landing time, not just arrival. Hospital environments have their own noise restrictions, visitor schedules, and emergency room capacity pressures that affect whether a helipad is actually available when you show up. I always recommend building in at least a twenty-minute buffer before and after the estimated time of arrival to account for these variables. If you are filing an IFR flight plan and need to reference the heliport, use the I80 identifier. If you are filing VFR, you still need to coordinate separately. There is no published VFR heliport route into Loyola. The airspace around here is dense with Chicago approach control, and the hospital itself sits near the eastern edge of the Oak Park and Forest Park area, which means you are dealing with controlled airspace that requires active ATC coordination regardless of your flight rules.
The biggest mistake I see people make is treating this like a regular airport. It is not. It is a medical facility with a pad, and every operation through it is subordinate to the hospital's clinical needs. Plan accordingly.
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