Top 10 stories of 2014: The Wright Amendment ends

Eighth in a series of the top stories of the past year.

Restrictions from the decades-old Wright Amendment finally lifted in October, and local airports spent millions sprucing up their terminals for the big day.

Both Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and Dallas Love Field posted a record number of passengers this year with the easing of domestic flight restrictions at Love and an increase in international service at DFW. And to accommodate that growth, the airports renovated terminals and parking garages and added new concessions for travelers.

A $500 million 20-gate terminal was built at Dallas Love Field as well as a new baggage claim area. DFW reopened 44 renovated gates in three terminals and added a new parking guidance system to Terminal D.

And there’s more to come.

“For next year, we will surpass the midway point in our renewal work across Terminals A, B and E and we will bring in more and higher levels of concessions, so our customers can enjoy more of the modernized DFW Airport,” airport CEO Sean Donohue said recently.

End of Wright

Since 1980, flights out of Dallas Love Field were restricted to cities in Texas and nearby states. But that all ended on Oct. 13, when the Wright Amendment restrictions expired.

Southwest Airlines threw a party for employees and passengers as the first long-haul domestic flight from Dallas to Denver left around 6:40 a.m. And Virgin America flew an aircraft from DFW to Love with its founder, Sir Richard Branson, entertaining customers before the airline started its new operations at Love.

“This is a major day for the city of Dallas,” Mayor Mike Rawlings said at a news conference after the first flight. “The Wright Amendment is gone. We're going to be flying all over the country at this airport and we have new product and new options for the citizens of Dallas.”

The airport, however, is limited to 20 gates, and international flights are still not allowed there.

So far, both American Airlines and DFW said they have seen just minimal impact from the new long-haul flights out of Love Field. DFW, which served a record 63 million passengers in 2014, has focused its growth on international service.

More flights mean less parking

While operations went smoothly on the first day of post-Wright Amendment, parking problems arose during the Thanksgiving holiday period. All garages, valet and adjacent parking lots at Love Field were completely full by Thanksgiving morning, leaving some travelers without a place to park. The airport has 7,000 available parking spaces to handle an expected 500,000 passengers a month.

This month, airport officials told the city that it expects Love Field will need 1,000 more parking spaces next year and about 4,000 spaces by 2020 based on current growth projections, which show daily flights growing from 148 to 190 in 2015 with more than 6 million travelers moving through the airport.

“We have begun the process of planning for a new garage because we feel like it is going to be warranted sooner rather than later because of the jump in passenger traffic,” city aviation director Mark Duebner said.

The city is evaluating plans to build a five-level parking garage that will have 4,000 additional parking spaces adjacent to the ticket hall. If the City Council approves the plan, the new garage could be completed as early as the summer of 2017.

More construction ahead

Passengers flying through DFW face at least five more years of construction as the airport continues to renovate older terminals. Sections of Terminal A, B and E are under renovation, and portions of the Terminal A and E parking garages are being built.

Over the summer, the airport updated its terminal renovation budget, boosting it to $2.7 billion and stretching the construction schedule out to 2020. Part of the budget increase was due to American requesting that gates in Terminal C, originally set to be demolished, instead be renovated.

“Because of the impact that the construction is having on our customers at the airport, we have to step up our game,” Donohue told airport board members at their December meeting.

Several initiatives include better signage for travelers during construction and making improvements in parking. For example, parking in Terminal D has gotten easier as the airport installed a new parking system that places green and red lights above every space, letting customers know which are open.

Continued growth in 2015

Both airports will continue to add flights to new destinations in the coming year.

At Love Field, Southwest will launch service to San Francisco and Oakland on Jan. 6. Virgin America is expected to add flights to Chicago O’Hare sometime in 2015.

The number of international cities served out of DFW will also grow as American plans to add nonstop service to Beijing over the summer. VivaAerobus, a low-cost Mexican airline, will launch thrice-weekly service to Guadalajara and Monterrey in March and add flights to Cancun in July.

“We have had a lot of success in recent years in attracting new international service to DFW Airport, and we want to make sure that we give our full support as a community to all the carriers serving DFW so they continue to offer our customers great choices for travel around the globe,” Donohue said.

This story was originally published December 28, 2014 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Top 10 stories of 2014: The Wright Amendment ends."