Dec. 11--Descend for a landing at Midway Airport aboard a fast-moving jet and you feel as if the plane is going to clip homeowners' TV aerials in the seconds before the wheels hit the runway.

And thus it has been at Midway for decades, as city neighborhoods have grown toward, and up to the very boundaries, of what was a small airport from the start--built on a 1-square-mile parcel and designed to handle airplanes powered by propellers.

But economics and politics, together with aviation technology, have conspired to ensure Midway's continued operation at 55th Street and Cicero Avenue as far into the future as anyone can foresee.

Nevertheless, inevitable questions about the airport's safety have been raised following the death of a young boy whose family's car was crushed Thursday when a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 landing in a snowstorm plowed through a perimeter fence and onto Central Avenue.

Mayor Richard Daley, who has helped to breathe new life into the little field, praised its safety record in the wake of the accident: "It has been tremendous over ... many years."

But it doesn't take an aeronautical engineer to know that, though Midway may be in compliance with all applicable Federal Aviation Administration regulations, its tight dimensions can be unforgiving when something goes wrong.

Though some airports have the equivalent of multiple football field lengths of open space at the ends of their runways, Midway's 31 Center has only 82 feet between the end of the runway and a barrier wall that separates the airfield from the street, the FAA said.