Southwest Airlines is teasing Dallas – Fort Worth service and also starting to fly redeyes in comments made by its CEO at the Skift Aviation Forum.
I broke the news over the summer that Southwest would start selling overnight connections, using their existing schedule to sell itineraries that involve an overnight layover at six airports (Baltimore; Denver; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Chicago Midway; and Oakland). This was seen as a tease for eventual overnight flying, something their old computer systems didn’t support.
However redeye flights won’t come soon. Southwest hasn’t been fully utilizing its fleet during the day due to lack of pilots. They’ll clearly focus on building back daytime utilization of their planes first.
Meanwhile, Dallas – Fort Worth service is interesting but it cannot happen until 2025. They’ve been teasing it for several years. Southwest’s CEO Bob Jordan offers a hilarious statement in support of the service, though:
The airline is operating 208 flights daily from those its gates at Love Field, and there’s enough demand to increase those to 300 if the airport had more gates to use, Jordan said.
There are two things to understand here:
- Dallas Love Field is legally allowed only 20 gates in large measure to give Southwest a near-monopoly.
- Southwest cannot legally fly out of another Dallas airport until 2025, for a related reason.
Southwest Airlines was founded at Dallas Love Field. Other airlines had agreed to move to DFW. Those airlines fought in court to keep Southwest from serving the closer-in airport. Southwest eventually won.
In response, airlines lobbied Congress for the Wright Amendment which limited what Southwest could do at Love Field. They were limited initially to flying within Texas and to contiguous states.
The list of states airlines could fly to from Love Field was expanded slightly, and the limitation didn’t apply to aircraft with 56 or fewer seats. (Legend Airlines pulled seats out of planes to offer all premium cabin service from Love Field to business markets. They faced lawsuits over the plan, and American Airlines dumped capacity with their own premium cabin Fokker 100 service – putting Legend out of business.)
Ex-Legend Airlines DC-9 (Credit aeroprints.com via Wikimedia Commons)
When the Wright Amendment was finally lifted, Southwest went from being the oppressed to being the oppressor. The deal required the destruction of gates leaving Southwest in control of nearly all the gates at the airport. There is no major airport in the United States more dominated by a single carrier than Southwest at Dallas Love Field.
No one could come in and really compete against Southwest, and Love Field service couldn’t grow to compete against American at DFW.
While the Wright Amendment’s restrictions on flying to specific states with aircraft that have more than 56 seats was lifted, Southwest would have to give up some of its Love Field gate space if it wanted to serve DFW airport earlier than that. They are not going to do so. This restriction remains in place until 2025.
Southwest complains about lack of expansion space at Dallas Love Field but they are literally the reason that 12 gates were taken out of service there (and the old Legend terminal demolished). Meanwhile they could expand service at Dallas – Fort Worth airport now if they’d give up their legally privileged status at Love Field.
(HT: @crucker)
Excellent context, thanks Gary !!!
accurate article other than in failing to mention that Dallas residents were quite vocal in wanting also to cap the capacity of Love Field and are the reason why no one is going to try to change anything.
Southwest controls 18 of the 20 gates, Delta now has one after a long fight, and Alaska has one but it is likely they will walk away in 2025 and allow American back in.
All gate leases are up later this decade so it is possible there could be a reset but that is not likely.
You are right that no airport is as dominated by a single carrier as Love Field.
As for serving DFW, that is a given in addition to opening one or more satellite airports in N. Texas.
WN also cannot operate international flights and their ORD and IAH “experiments” have proven they can do well at legacy carrier hub airports by flying to WN’s own hubs or focus cities.
This will be yet another thorn in AA’s side and part of how WN will regrow its revenues along w/ redeyes
There is more and more talk that the company is ready to sign w/ the pilots although some will be convinced they are never getting enough
>>> Meanwhile [Southwest] could expand service at Dallas – Fort Worth airport now if they’d give up their legally privileged status at Love Field. <<<
I wouldn't give it up either.
I love WN and use them quite often. I also have several friends that work for them. That said, if I remember correctly back in 2006/2007 WN leaked veiled threats to local media that they were considering an HDQ relo to. PHX due to DAL restrictions. They weren’t, of course, because WN is never going to spend a dollar they do not have to spend. That is when Dallas city government got involved and along with the N. Tx congressional delegation pushed a deal with Congress thqt included through ticketing, long(er) haul flights, etc. from DAL,
etc. Frankly, I am surprised that WN did not push for more gates at that time, but I don’t think they realized how gangbusters they would go at DAL when long(er) haul flights were allowed. I could see the city of Dallas again pushing for more gates at …but there really isn’t a direct economic benefit (landing fees, concessions, etc.) to Dallas as they own 1/2 of DFW anyway and when WN ultimately hits DFW they will benefit either way. Just my two cents which is probably all it is worth.
I worked for WN at DAL for 8 years. Gates 11 & 13 belonged to AA but were released as part of the AA/US merger. The city awarded them to VA, and VA merged with AS.
Gates 15 & 17 were former CO gates, after CO merged with UA they went to UA. DL had a gate at the old airport and after the construction they were pretty much left out.
So DL threw a tantrum bc their elites preferred DAL to DFW (who doesn’t?) UA decided to sub-lease their gates and went to DL with an offer, DL said “no thanks,” but then stayed anyway.
UA then approached WN and Gary Kelly pulled out the checkbook; $120M for the two gates for a 10 year sublease.
So that tells you how much money is at stake.
Dave,
your account is mostly accurate other than to note that Delta fought UA’s attempts to sell the UA leases to WN because it eliminated DL’s access to Love Field.
Southwest and alot of their fans (and anti-DL people all across the internet world) argued that DL did not have a right to any gates if UA signed a lease w/ WN but that is not the way the FAA funds airports and the FAA acts to protect competition. An airline that is operating service cannot have its access to an airport eliminated as other carriers change their leases. DL fought on that principle, not on the basis of the Wright Amendment or any derivate of it but on the basis of law.
DL also applied to expand its previous 5 flights/day at Love Field using the ex-UA leased gate BEFORE Southwest filed its schedule to fill up its 18 gates. Federal law puts priority on access to expanded gate capacity (in this case because of changes to the Wright Amendment) in a first-come first served order. While Delta originally asked for 2 gates to be able to operate 20 or so flights, they settled for one gate that is all their own and will serve LGA, LAX and ATL, the former of which keeps being delayed due to the ATC-driven flight reductions at the NYC airports.
I’m not sure how the actual gate numbers today line up w/ the past but AS recently agreed to give up an a gate so AS and DL now each have one gate and WN has the other 18.
just as in Chicago and Houston, Delta’s strategy in Dallas is to serve both commercial airports even though it is a non-hub carrier in all of those cities
Interesting that tim doesn’t dispute Dave’s account that Delta could’ve leased United’s gate at first dibs but chose, instead, to go to court to get gates instead of paying like WN did. How JetBlue of Delta
Max,
I wouldn’t expect you to get it but Delta did not have to pay $120 million and didn’t.
United chose to make money; Southwest signed a contract thinking it could buy a monopoly; Delta sued and won.
It isn’t hard for any rational person to understand.
The exclusion of competitors at federally funded US airports cannot be bought.
Gary, my memory disagrees with your interpretation that “Dallas Love Field is legally allowed only 20 gates in large measure to give Southwest a near-monopoly.” As I recall (happy to be corrected), the 5-party agreement was negotiated without Southwest; only after it had been written was Southwest brought in and told something along the lines of “agree to this or else”. The reason for the reduction of gates at Love Field was to put a limit on AA’s exposure to competition from WN in the Dallas area, not to give WN a near-monopoly, although I agree that WN ended up in that position.
@HPN-HRL – first, my understanding was that Herb was very much in the room negotiating this, and the second the result was to hand Southwest a monopoly at the airport *while* capping American’s exposure to competition as Southwest no longer faced restrictions on where they could fly.
A redeye to Hawaii via WN??
There are too many other airlines that offer better connections to the Pacific Islands.
And WN fares are no better than the majors.
Not worth the headache!!