DALLAS - Forty-three years after its first flight from Dallas Love Field, Southwest Airlines is finally free to move about the country from its home airport.
As of Monday, Oct. 13, Southwest can legally provide nonstop service from Love Field to any destination in the continental U.S., as the restrictive Wright Amendment releases its grip. The Wright rules only permitted nonstop flights between Love and nine states, including Texas.
Instead of stopping in Jackson, Miss., Southwest can now fly straight from Dallas to Atlanta or Orlando. Instead of routing through Albuquerque, the Southwest 737 can fly from Love to Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Denver.
For the airport that gave Southwest its LUV stock ticker name, the end of the amendment represents a revival of fortunes after decades in regulatory lockdown.
Before Southwest launched an aggressive campaign to repeal the Wright Amendment in 2004, traffic at Love Field was beginning to taper off, falling from more than 7 million passengers in 1996 to 5.4 million in 2002.
Southwest chairman Gary Kelly told the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce recently that the airline faced a choice of moving to the more expensive Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport nine miles away or fighting the Wright Amendment.
In 2006, the airlines and cities agreed to a compromise that gradually lifted the restrictions imposed by Congress in 1979 under the guidance of U.S. Rep. Jim Wright, D-Fort Worth.
The restrictions, imposed to protect the then-new DFW airport, only permitted flights from Love Field to destinations in Texas and neighboring states.
"That's behind us," Kelly said. "I think we're all lucky in that sense that the change came at just the right time."
Along with the launch of new service from Southwest and the impending arrival of Virgin America Airlines, Love Field is putting the finishing touches on a $500 million remodeling project financed with tax-exempt bonds backed entirely by Southwest revenues.
"The terminal is pretty much completed," said Bob Montgomery, director of airport affairs for Southwest. "We were able to bring in the project a year early, and right now we're about $14 million below our original estimates."
While Southwest is committed to paying off the Love Field Airport Modernization Corp. debt through 2040, Love Field is considered debt free, said Mark Duebner, director of aviation for Dallas.
"The last debt we had was on parking garage B," Duebner said. "We retired that in 2011," he said.
"We're in a pretty good spot," he said. "If we need to redo a runway sometime in the future, we'll probably issue debt. Otherwise, we're going to try to stick to pay as you go."
At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the original beneficiary of restrictions on Love Field, the end of the Wright Amendment is considered a "non-event."
"I think the general consensus is that it's going to have minimal impact on us," a spokesperson for DFW said. "I don't think we're going to lose any business because of it. It is an event for the consumer because it could bring down airfares."
With only 20 gates, compared to DFW's 165, Love Field traffic is expected to grow 50% under the new paradigm with an upward ceiling of about 6.5 million enplanements per year. DFW's passenger count is nearly10 times that.
"We don't aspire to be anything bigger," Duebner said. "Once we have all the 20 gates utilized, we'll be the right size. If we go to 6.5 million, we'll max out. We could go to 8 million, but that would be difficult."
As Love Field celebrates its Boeing 737 flights to New York, Los Angeles and 16 other cities once off-limits, DFW is inaugurating passenger service to international destinations such as Sydney and Dubai on Airbus A380 super jumbo jets, the world's largest passenger planes.
Qantas Airlines' service to DFW now represents the longest scheduled nonstop flight in the world on the largest commercial aircraft, officials said. Qantas Flight 7 from Sydney to DFW and Qantas Flight 8 back from DFW cover a distance of 8,578 miles, and take between 15.5 and 16 hours to complete. The day after Qantas switched its Sydney service to the A380 from Boeing 747s on Sept. 30, the first Emirates A380 arrived, upsizing its Boeing 777 service between DFW and Dubai.
In addition to those routes, DFW's dominant carrier, American Airlines, now ranks as the largest international carrier in the world, with new service to Beijing and Hong Kong.
Those destinations are unlikely to ever appear on a Love Field arrivals and departures board. Despite the Wright Amendment's demise, the airport is still restricted to the lower 48 states.
From Love Field's perspective, the lifting of the Wright Amendment leaves the airport in a support role, serving an urban population close to the core of Dallas. While Dallas represented the bulk of the region's population when DFW opened in 1974, the city today makes up about a sixth of the metro area's census of 6.5 million people.
"Our role is to be a positive overall on the Dallas economy," Duebner said. "From the metro area -- certainly an area as large as DFW -- two airports are easily supported. I don't think anyone's going to drive past DFW to come to Love Field."
Southwest can take credit for providing a $4 billion economic impact annually to Dallas, generating 22,000 jobs, including 8,000 Southwest employees, Montgomery said.
"Southwest is the largest company in Texas that's actually incorporated in Texas," he said.
The remodeling of Love Field, with Southwest directing the project, has proven the value of public-private finance and non-traditional approaches to airport development, Montgomery said.
"If Dallas had done the project, it would have taken two to three years longer and added 50% in terms of cost," Montgomery said.
"That's not just Dallas. It's all the belts and suspenders we put on things managed by government," he said.
"And we didn't just go out and hire our favorite friends," Montgomery said. "We promised the city of Dallas we would hire 25% from women or minority-owned or other disadvantaged businesses. We actually hit 41%."
The launch of the new routes has caused a fairly muted buzz in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Southwest has been updating an intense billboard campaign counting down to the new service in its north Dallas neighborhood over the past year, but the milestone has otherwise occurred largely beneath the radar.
Duebner said the dramatic rise in traffic expected from the more popular destinations is one source of concern for airport officials.
"I think right now, we're more anxious than anything else," Duebner said. "From a staff standpoint, managing growth is easier at 5% per year than 50% overnight."
"Once the hoopla dies down, the next big event is Thanksgiving," he said. "We're really bracing ourselves for that."
