Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - History

History

As early as 1927, before the area had an airport, Dallas proposed a joint airport with Fort Worth. Fort Worth declined the offer, and thus the two cities opened their own airports, Love Field and Meacham Field. Both airports had scheduled airline service, with both fields being famous for their role in the events of November 22, 1963, before the assassination of President Kennedy. President Johnson took the oath of office on the tarmac at Love Field.

In 1940, the Civil Aeronautics Administration earmarked $1.9 million for the construction of a Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. American Airlines and Braniff Airways struck a deal with the city of Arlington to build an airport there, but the governments of Dallas and Fort Worth disagreed over its construction and the project was abandoned in 1942. After World War II, Fort Worth annexed the site and developed it into Amon Carter Field with the help of American Airlines.

Fort Worth transferred its commercial flights from Meacham Field to the new airport in 1953, which was just now 12 miles (19 km) from Dallas Love Field.

In 1960, Fort Worth purchased Amon Carter Field and renamed it Greater Southwest International Airport GSW in an attempt to compete with Dallas' more successful airport. However, GSW's traffic continued to decline relative to Dallas Love Field. By the mid-1960s, Fort Worth was getting 1% of Texas air traffic while Dallas was getting 49%, which led to the virtual abandonment of GSW. The joint airport proposal was revisited in 1961 after the FAA refused to invest any more money in separate Dallas and Fort Worth airports. Although the Fort Worth airport was eventually abandoned, Dallas Love Field became congested and had no more room to expand. Following an order from the federal government in 1964 that they would unilaterally choose a site if both cities could not come to an agreement on a site, officials from the two cities finally agreed on a location for a new regional airport that was north of the abandoned GSW and almost perfectly equidistant from the two city centers. The land was purchased by both cities in 1966, and construction began in 1969.

The first landing of a supersonic BAC/Sud Aviation (now BAE Systems and Aerospatiale) Concorde in the United States occurred at DFW Airport in 1973 to commemorate the airport's completion. Concorde later served DFW from 1979–1980 in a cooperative agreement between Braniff Airways, British Airways, and Air France. Braniff ended the service due to low load factors. Braniff was the largest airline to open DFW in 1974 with a full semicircular terminal designated 2W (now Terminal B) devoted to its operations. Other airlines, like American Airlines, only had half a terminal or less. DFW Airport opened for commercial service on January 13, 1974. The original name was Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. The name change to Dallas/Fort Worth International did not occur until 1985. Following the Wright Amendment of 1979, which banned long-distance flights from Love Field, DFW became the only airport in the metropolitan area to offer long-haul commercial air passenger service on aircraft with more than 56 passenger seats. American established its first hub at DFW on June 11, 1981, adding flights to London in 1982, and Tokyo in 1987. American Airlines finished moving its headquarters from Grand Prairie, Texas to a building in Fort Worth located near DFW Airport on January 17, 1983; the airline began leasing the facility from the airport, which owns the facility. Braniff International already had International service to South America and Mexico in 1974, London in 1978 and Europe and Asia in 1979. Delta Air Lines built up a hub at DFW during the same period but announced closure in 2004 in a restructuring of the airline to avoid bankruptcy. Today, Delta only flies from DFW to its 7 hubs.

After the closing of Delta's hub in 2005, DFW Airport offered incentives to Southwest Airlines to relocate its hub to DFW from Love Field. Southwest, like in the past, chose to stay at Love Field. In 1989, the airport authority announced plans to rebuild the existing terminals and construct 2 new runways. After an environmental impact study was released the following year, the cities of Irving, Euless, and Grapevine sued the airport over its extension plans, a battle that was finally decided (in favor of the airport) by the US Supreme Court in 1994. The seventh runway opened in 1996. The 4 primary North-South runways (those closest to the terminals) were all lengthened from 11,388 feet (3,471 m) to their current length of 13,400 feet (4,084 m). The first of these, 17R/35L, was extended in 1996 (at the same time the new runway was constructed), and the other three (17C/35C, 18L/36R, and 18R/36L) were extended in 2005. DFW is now the only airport in the world with 4 serviceable paved runways longer than 4,000 metres (13,123 ft).

Terminal D, built for international service operations, and Skylink, a modern people mover system, opened in 2005.

DFW was one of two airports in the US, the other being Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, to receive US troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan for rest and recuperation. This ended on March 14, 2012.