Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - Terminals

Terminals

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has five terminals totaling 152 gates. The airport is designed with expansion in mind, and can theoretically accommodate up to thirteen terminals totaling 260 gates, although this level of expansion is unlikely to be reached in the foreseeable future. The initial four terminals were designed by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum and Brodsky, Hopf & Adler.

The terminals at DFW are semicircular (except for the newest terminal, Terminal D, which is a "square U" shape) and built around the airport's central north-south arterial road, Spur 97, also known as "International Parkway." Until the late 1990s, they were designated by a number (2 being northernmost, 4 being southernmost) and a letter suffix ("E" for East, "W" for West). This system was later scrapped, and the terminals are now lettered from A to E. Terminals A, C, and E (from north to south) are on the east side of the airport, while Terminals B and D (from north to south) are on the west side.

DFW's terminals are designed to minimize the distance between a passenger's car and airplane as well as reduce traffic around terminals. A consequence of this layout is that connecting passengers had to walk extremely long distances between gates (in order to walk from one end of the semicircular concourse to the other, one must walk the entire length; there were no shortcuts between the ends). The original people mover train (Airtrans APM, later the American Airlines TrAAin) which opened with the airport was notoriously slow (17 mph (27 km/h)), uni-directional (running only in a counter-clockwise direction), and was located outside the secured area (thus requiring travelers to go through the security process again). It was replaced by SkyLink in April 2005 after serving approximately 250 million passengers. Skylink serves all five terminals at a considerably higher speed (up to 35 mph (56 km/h)), is bi-directional, and is located inside the secured area.

DFW Airport is undergoing a $1.9 billion "Terminal Renewal and Improvement Program" (TRIP), which encompasses renovations of Terminals A, B, C and E. Work on the project began following the conclusion of Super Bowl XLV in February. Terminal A will be the first terminal completed sometime in 2014, and the entire TRIP project should be complete by the end of 2017.