How much more will airlines be able to put into Dallas Love Field?

Last week, Southwest Airlines announced it would begin a daily flight from Dallas Love Field to both San Francisco and Oakland in early January. What was particularly interesting to us was that Southwest said those additional flights would raise Southwest’s daily departures at the Dallas airport to 153, up from about 121 or so today.

So the question is: Is that about all that Southwest can handle there?

At 153 flights in 16 gates, that amounts to 9.6 flights per gate per day for Southwest. We’ve sometimes used 10 flights per gate as a reasonable maximum. But Southwest now flies 175-seat Boeing 737s as well as 143-seat 737s, and it obviously takes more time to load and unload the bigger airplanes. Maybe that is close to all we can expect from Southwest.

Since the Love Field gates limits the airport’s capacity, it’s important for travelers that the holders of the gates utilize them as fully as possible. So let’s look around some more.

Virgin America, which will have two gates in the new 20-gate terminal, had announced 18 flights to five cities by February when it adds two daily departures to Chicago. Its daily average by early 2015 will be nine flights per gate.

The other two gates are leased by United Airlines. If there are plans to boost service out of Dallas after the Wright amendment expires Oct. 13, the airline hasn’t announced them.

Right now, United’s schedule for Oct. 13 and beyond is for seven departures a day to Houston on United Express carrier ExpressJet, same as today.

United/ExpressJet uses a mix of Embraer ERJ-135s and ERJ-145s, for a total of 311 seats departing each day.

Delta Air Lines, which wanted the two gates that Virgin America received, had promised 22 departures a day to five cities if it was given the gates. But without those gates, it eventually will offer only five daily flights on Boeing 717s to Atlanta. That’s 550 seats departing on Delta.

Let’s assume that all of Southwest’s departures will be on 143-seat Boeing 737-700 aircraft, although some undoubtedly will be the 175-seat Boeing 737-800. Let’s also assume that Virgin America will use 146-seat Airbus A320s.

So here’s how it’s looking by early 2015: