Passenger totals jump 13% at Dallas Love Field

Airlines at Dallas Love Field carried 13 percent more passengers in October than they did in the same month a year earlier, according to city of Dallas statistics.

The increase in traffic coincided with the Oct. 13 end of the Wright amendment. That federal law prohibited nonstop flights from Love Field to cities beyond Texas and eight other states.

As a result of the law’s expiration, Southwest Airlines Co. added long-haul destinations out of Dallas Love Field, Virgin America Inc. launched service from that airport and Delta Air Lines Inc. began using larger aircraft.

Numbers from the Dallas Department of Aviation showed that 863,771 passengers got on and off airline flights at Love Field last month, up 13.1 percent and nearly 100,000 passengers from the 763,854 who flew in and out of Love a year earlier.

The number of airline flights increased less than that — 9.6 percent, from 7,574 in October 2013 to 8,298 in 2014. But the average size of airplanes increased.

Delta began flying 117-seat Boeing 717s after Oct. 13, replacing 50-seat airplanes flown by a regional partner. Virgin America began flying its Airbus jets, with most Dallas flights so far on the carrier’s 119-seat A319 aircraft.

Southwest boosted its traffic by 8.7 percent, from 736,962 passengers in October 2013 to 801,445 passengers in October 2014. Even so, its market share dropped 3.7 percentage points, from 96.5 percent of all passengers carried to 92.8 percent.

Virgin quickly became the second-biggest operator at Love Field. Its 30,951 passengers gave it a 3.6-point market share.

November should show an even larger year-over-year bump after the airlines operating out of Love Field have a full month of operations with their expanded schedules or larger airplanes.

Virgin America, which began with nine departures combined to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., added four New York flights on Oct. 28.

Southwest, which launched flights to seven cities on Oct. 13, didn’t add the next eight cities to round out its schedule until Nov. 2. Its schedule went from 118 daily weekday departures before Oct. 13 to 140 on Oct. 13 and 149 on Nov. 2.

And Delta will have a full month of flying 117-seat jets rather than a partial month of 50-seat jets.

Southwest officials have touted the early success of its new flights, saying that more than 90 percent of the seats have been filled with passengers.

“The expansion at Love Field is going extraordinarily well,” Southwest chairman and CEO Gary Kelly told analysts on Nov. 10. “We thought it would, and indeed it is.”

Follow Terry Maxon on Twitter at @tmaxon.