It’s finally here, the day the Wright amendment goes away.
The federal law that has restricted flights out of Dallas Love Field for nearly 35 years disappears Monday. With its end, airlines finally begin operating nonstop flights from the Dallas airport to the far reaches of the United States.
“We’re ready,” Dallas aviation director Mark Duebner said. “If we’re not ready, we’ll have to adapt on that day.”
Southwest Airlines Co. chairman and chief executive Gary Kelly, celebrating Sunday afternoon at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, said he was “just overjoyed. It’s kind of hard to believe the day is here. It’s been such a long road to get to this point.”
At 6:40 a.m. Monday, Southwest Airlines makes history. Its Flight 1013 is scheduled to depart for Denver, becoming the first to take advantage of the restrictions’ end by going beyond Texas and the other eight states inside the Wright amendment boundaries.
At 9:10 a.m., Southwest’s Flight 4478 arrives from Chicago’s Midway Airport, making it the first flight to come in from a state outside the Wright area.
Before the day is out, nearly three dozen flights by Southwest, Virgin America Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc. will depart Love Field and head to nine airports outside the Wright area.
On Sunday and for many years before then, those flights would have all been violations of the 1980 federal law.
Southwest and Virgin America, which are making the most of the new rights, will celebrate with the appropriate hoopla.
On Sunday, Southwest hosted a party with a number of musical performers at downtown Dallas’ Klyde Warren Park. Then, on Monday, Kelly is scheduled to greet customers inside Love Field’s new 20-gate terminal, then lead a midmorning celebration at Southwest’s nearby headquarters.
Virgin America chief executive David Cush will join Virgin Group founder Richard Branson on a celebratory flight that leaves Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and arrives at Love Field around 9 a.m. But before the flight lands in Dallas, it’ll fly around and give country music star Kacey Musgraves an opportunity to perform.
Virgin America will follow up the events with a House of Blues celebration Monday night.
Here’s what we will see Monday in new service:
Southwest will add 22 flights to seven airports: Baltimore, Chicago Midway, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Fla., and Washington Reagan National Airport. That’s in addition to the 118 flights it operates to cities in Texas and other Wright amendment states.
Virgin America will transfer its three daily flights to both Los Angeles and San Francisco from D/FW Airport. It will also launch three daily flights to Washington Reagan.
Delta, which since 2012 has had a regional partner flying 50-seat jets to Atlanta, will add its own 117-seat jet to the schedule. Under the Wright amendment, airplanes of 56 seats or smaller could fly beyond the Wright boundaries.
Two other airlines — United Express with seven 50-seat flights to Houston and SeaPort Airlines with two nine-seat flights to El Dorado, Ark. — aren’t increasing their service Monday.
On Oct. 28, Virgin America will add four daily flights to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, giving it 13 daily departures.
On Nov. 2, Southwest will begin nonstop flights to eight more cities — New York LaGuardia; Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa Bay, Fla.; Nashville, Tenn.; Phoenix; and San Diego and Santa Ana, Calif. With that schedule change, it’ll cut 18 of the 118 flights to Wright amendment cities; with 49 flights to the cities beyond the limits, it will have a total of 149 daily departures.
On Jan. 6, Southwest adds service to San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. Its total departures from Love Field will reach 153 flights, up nearly 30 percent from its pre-Monday schedule. And in late April, Virgin America adds a flight to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, giving it 16 departures at Love Field.
With an equal number of arrivals, the Dallas airport can expect to see thousands more passengers arriving and departing every day.
In 2013, Love Field recorded 4.2 million passengers getting on airplanes. Duebner said that projections in 2008 were that the number would increase to 5.3 million a year after the Wright amendment’s end.
But now the projections are that 6.3 million passengers will board Love Field flights each year. That would be nearly 50 percent more passengers than in 2013, or about 5,600 more passengers departing on an average day.
And a similar number of passengers will be arriving and getting off the airplanes.
Speaking at a Dallas Bar Association program Sept. 30, Duebner said the big impact will probably be on traffic. The only access to Love Field is through the already busy intersection of Cedar Springs Road and Mockingbird Lane. And then there’s the parking.
“It’s apparent that we’re going to need some structured parking. We’ll probably be at the limit,” Duebner said. However, he added, “I think we’ve got more structured parking coming very soon.”
To free up space, the city is relocating airline and airport employees who use the public parking garage next to the terminal. They now are using an old Legend Airlines parking garage off Lemmon Avenue. In addition, Southwest is paving three blocks along Mockingbird Lane to create an extra 900 spaces.
“We’re used to this around the country,” Kelly said. “It’s a high-class problem. We go in, we lower fares, we stimulate traffic.”
When Southwest goes into a new airport, “one of the immediate things we tell every airport around the country once we start to grow is you need to pay really close attention to the parking,” Kelly said. “So we’ve built a lot of parking around the country, and I’d say this is very typical, and I think the city has been very responsive.”
As for the airport itself, “all our facilities will be up,” Duebner said. “They’ll be running. TSA [the Transportation Security Administration] has been staffing up with the peak loads, especially in the morning. I think everybody’s on board. We should be ready.”
Kelly said it was a tribute to former chairman and CEO Herb Kelleher and former president Colleen Barrett “that Southwest is what it is today because of them. I’m sure they never thought they would see this day come. It’s just wonderful it came together. It’s going to be good for everybody, for everyone. It’s just a real joy.”
Follow Terry Maxon on Twitter at @tmaxon.
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