The 30-year saga of 14/32

It's sparked 30 years' worth of neighborhood outcries. It's played a part in not just one but two chief executives of the Massachusetts Port Authority getting fired. It's regularly poisoned City Hall-State House relations.

And sometime on Thanksgiving morning, the first major new runway at Logan International Airport in nearly four decades will go into service without much fanfare.

The mile-long strip, known as Runway 14/32 -- a reference, without the final 0, to its compass heading -- will become Logan's sixth runway. It's expected to substantially cut delays at the Boston airport, especially during cold months, when prevailing northwest winds can effectively shut Logan down to a single runway each for takeoffs and landings, causing delays of 15 minutes and longer.

But it's taken no less than 33 years for 14/32 to become reality, a testament to how politically charged Logan expansion has been ever since demonstrations in the 1960s, when East Boston mothers lay in the streets to protest the destruction of Eastie parks and homes .

"For anybody who was around in the 1970s when the battle over airport expansion was in the papers every single day, day after day, it is amazing to think 14/32 would ever actually get built," said John A. Vitagliano , a Winthrop community activist former governor Michael S. Dukakis named to two seven-year terms on the Massport board to be a foe of airport expansion .

"What we have here is a classic compromise," Vitagliano said. "The runway is going to be a reality, but it's going to be a significantly different kind of runway than what was originally planned, provided Massport lives up to its obligations."

By court order, use of 14/32 will be restricted to planes taking off and landing over Boston Harbor, so Massport will be legally forbidden -- except in emergencies -- from using the runway to let planes take off or land over South Boston and downtown. Massport can only use it during about one-third of the year when winds are from the northwest or southeast.

In the 1990s, a key Dukakis operative, former transportation secretary and Massport board member Frederick P. Salvucci , engineered construction of the 270-room Hyatt Harborside Hotel, a stone's throw from the end of the new runway, largely to create as big an obstacle as possible to Massport extending 14/32 or using it for planes flying over the city.

Because the runway is just 5,000 feet long, half the size of Logan's three main jet runways, it will serve only smaller planes such as 50- and 70-seat regional jets.

But Massport predicts the new runway will reduce delays at Logan that aren't related to poor weather or air traffic congestion along the East Coast by 25 percent on average -- and by 90 percent on some windy days.

Dan Wolf, chief executive of Cape Air, whose nine-seat Cessnas are expected to be some of the most frequent users of 14/32 for flights to Hyannis, Provincetown, and the islands, said, "What it will allow us to do is offer much more predictable and reliable service for customers. It allows the airport capacity to remain constant, regardless of wind direction."

Most of the time, Logan can count on the use of two runways for jet landings and a third for takeoffs, which is sufficient to keep up with the normal 100 to 120 hourly takeoffs and landings .

But Logan's biggest vulnerability is when winds are coming from the northwest at more than 10 knots. This can create dangerous cross-winds that limit operations to one runway for takeoffs and one for landings, sending delays soaring. In a more wide-open city, a solution would be to simply build more properly-aligned runways to accommodate shifting wind directions, but Logan's 2,400 acres -- one-fourteenth the size of Denver's airport and one-seventh the size of Dallas's -- are hemmed in on three sides by water and on the fourth by densely populated East Boston.

As Wolf sees it, 14/32 only ensures Logan keeps the same runway configurations regardless of wind. "I've never viewed this as a capacity enhancement," said Wolf, who not only runs the airline but also pitches in at the controls of a Cessna 402 each weekend during the summer tourist rush.

But to some community activists from such neighborhoods as Chelsea, East Boston, South Boston, the South End, and Winthrop who have battled airport noise for years, 14/32 looks like a giant key unlocking the door to more Logan flights.

"We will not be giving thanks for this new runway on Thanksgiving day," said Mary Ellen Welch , an East Boston schoolteacher, Jeffries Point resident, and veteran of three decades of community battles with Massport. "When you get right down to it, it's going to increase noise. There will be more operations, more arrivals, more departures, and therefore there will be more noise and more traffic over our heads and next to our heads."

Welch's apocalyptic view of 14/32 held sway for most of the 1970s and 1980s. Former Massport executive director Edward J. King's insistence on constructing the runway -- as part of a controversial airport expansion that involved filling acres of Boston Harbor -- got him sacked by the Massport board in 1974.

King bounced back from his firing to run for governor and beat Dukakis in 1978. When he appointed enough members to control the Massport board, King engineered the ouster of Dukakis appointee David W. Davis , who vehemently opposed 14/32. Davis returned to his post after Dukakis beat King in a 1982 gubernatorial rematch.

With Dukakis and Salvucci controlling the transportation agenda through 1990, 14/32 was dead. But by the late-1990s, with congestion worsening year after year at Logan, Republican governor Paul Cellucci reactivated plans for the runway, igniting a bitter feud with Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Democratic congressmen from Eastern Massachusetts.

After a long court battle, in November 2003 Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford finally lifted a Dukakis-era airport expansion ban and permitted construction of 14/32. Botsford imposed a battery of conditions, such as allowing only flight paths over the harbor, enforcing restrictions based on wind, and increasing landing fees on rush-hour flights if Logan congestion worsens.

Although Logan's annual passenger load is forecast by the FAA to grow 73 percent by 2020, current Massport chief executive Thomas J. Kinton Jr. insists that 14/32 isn't truly an expansion.

"It simply brings the airport back to what we enjoy, in terms of runway capacity, in other times of the year," Kinton said.

He expresses no frustration over the last 30 years.

"We engaged the community in a very active process that was respectful of the community and their concerns -- as well as the airport's needs," Kinton said.

Once Massport used chainsaws and bulldozers to turn parks into runways. Today, the agency wants to "be a good neighbor," Kinton said. And, he added, starting Thursday morning, "I think the onus is on us."

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.