You could soon fly Southwest out of DFW Airport. Sides are in talks over ‘modest’ service
Southwest Airlines flights out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport may be on the horizon.
The Dallas-based airline is looking to expand beyond Love Field Airport into Dallas-Fort Worth International starting as early as 2025, CEO Bob Jordan said Wednesday.
Speaking at the Skift Aviation Forum in Fort Worth, Jordan said the airline is happy at Love Field but is constrained. Southwest operates out of 18 of Love Field’s 20 gates. Two other carriers, Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines, also service Love Field.
“As the Metroplex continues to grow, the constraint at Love Field becomes more and more of an issue, because the capability of what you could do is more and more constrained,” Jordan said.
Jordan said Southwest has talked with DFW officials and is exploring the potential for a “modest presence as they look at their facilities.” The carrier would like to operate out of DFW’s future Terminal F.
“Job one is making sure that we have the ability to serve the Metroplex,” Jordan said at the forum, which is being held at the Omni Fort Worth. The event features CEOs and senior executives from across the airline industry to discuss the future of aviation.
For decades, a 1979 federal law called the Wright Amendment — meant to protect DFW from competition — limited flights out of Love Field to only Texas and neighboring states. The Wright Amendment expired in 2014, but Southwest remained restricted under a 2006 compromise from expanding into DFW unless it gave up gates at Love Field. That restriction ends in 2025.
DFW had sought to lure Southwest before. In 2005, Dallas-Fort Worth International offered a new terminal and $22 million in incentives, and then spent $350,000 on billboards and advertisements.
Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said the airline has evaluated all of the airports it could fly out of in North Texas.
“We settled on asking DFW for some gates in their upcoming new terminal,” Watterson said. “They’re not ready to commit to gate leases yet.”
Watterson said flying out of DFW would allow for international operations — which Love Field does not — but the bulk of services would be domestic.
“DFW would be a complement to Love Field,” Watterson said. “We want to keep everything we have a Love Field, because it works, but it’s insufficient for our customer base in the Metroplex, which is quite large and many of them actually live closer to DFW.”
Watterson said timing of operations out of DFW would be up to the airport.
“Airport infrastructure takes a while to develop,” Watterson said. “Terminal F, they’ve highlighted, it’s going to take them a couple of years and so we’re waiting for more definitive plans once they get further down the path on their architecture, construction, engineering milestones and will give us and others more detailed delivery dates.”
DFW Airport confirmed talks in a statement issued to the Star-Telegram on Wednesday.
“As Southwest Airlines announced today, DFW Airport and Southwest have had preliminary discussions regarding the potential for Southwest to serve DFW in the future,” the airport said. “Southwest highlighted they are interested in discussing a moderate amount of flights from DFW and we expect the discussions to continue with no decisions reached until 2024 at the earliest. DFW’s future infrastructure investments include gate growth for American Airlines and all other airlines interested in serving the Dallas Fort Worth region.”
Today, Dallas-Fort Worth International is already the second busiest airport in the world, with a record-setting 80 million travelers expected by the end of the year. The airport is investing billions between now and 2029 to modernize and expand terminals and improve roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
The expansion includes building a sixth terminal and overhauling the aging Terminal C. The airport will gain a total of 24 additional gates over three terminals.
The $1.6 billion first phase will include building the new Terminal F with an initial 15-gate concourse. Construction will start in late 2024 and finish by 2026. The new terminal will have room for more gates in the future.
DFW will invest $2.7 billion to expand and modernize Terminals A and C.
Terminal C, which hasn’t undergone a complete overhaul since the airport was built in 1973, will be “reimagined” with significant upgrades to roadways and terminal access. Construction on Terminal C will be over three or four phases, fully completed in 2028.
With more than 250 nonstop destinations this year, DFW is experiencing “unprecedented growth,” airport officials have said. Several airlines including American announced new routes in recent months.
Over the summer, the airport saw its busiest day in its history, when more than 281,000 passengers came to DFW on June 30. The airport served more than 22.5 million passengers in June, July and August alone. The airport has also exceeded pre-pandemic passenger traffic.
This story was originally published November 1, 2023 at 12:59 PM.
