Officials at DFW were livid. Lawsuits were levied. The city of Dallas took things even further, making it a crime for a commercial aircraft to operate out of Love Field. And Southwest found itself back in a courtroom in March And in a final blow to DFW, the U.
Supreme Court ended the matter in when it refused to hear further arguments in the case. It finally seemed like Southwest could turn its full attention to building its business rather than defending it. Back in the s, Dallas was mainly served by Love Field. However, the footprint of the airport limited potential for future growth.
The plan was to move existing carriers at Love Field to the new airport and reduce commercial service at Love Field. However, Southwest Airlines was founded with intentions to operate out of Love Field. The airline received necessary permissions to fly out of the field.
However, lawsuits started in an attempt to get Southwest to move. Those lawsuits proved unsuccessful, and Southwest won the right to fly in and out of Love Field. This site is geographically closer to Dallas. So, after the airline industry was deregulated in , Texas representatives in the United States Congress pushed forward an amendment in to limit air traffic out of Love Field. This was known as the Wright Amendment.
The Wright Amendment limited interstate air travel from Love Field. The only routes an airline could serve from the airports were to destinations in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas, severely limiting growth out of the airport. In addition, airlines could not sell connections out of Dallas with a stop in one of the neighboring states.
However, a passenger could purchase one ticket from Dallas to Oklahoma City and another ticket from Oklahoma City to Chicago on their own. Airlines could not market the aforementioned options. Now, much of the law goes away as of Oct. It applied to any airplane with more than 56 seats operated on scheduled service. According to its opponents, it was to stifle competition and keep the main carrier at Love Field, Southwest Airlines, from prospering out of Dallas.
Yes, a couple of times. In , it added Missouri. In , new Southwest Airlines chief executive Gary Kelly launched an effort to repeal the Wright amendment. With pressure from the two U. Essentially it said that the limits on nonstop flights to U. In the interim, airlines at Love Field could fly passengers anywhere in the U.
The change said that airlines cannot operate nonstop international flights into or out of Love Field. The end of the Wright amendment and the opening up of Love Field will bring consumers more choices and lower fares — at least initially. The law, named after its author, U. Not only could airlines not fly beyond those states from Dallas, they could not sell a ticket for a flight from Dallas to points beyond that handful of states.
Dallas-based Southwest grudgingly lived with the law for nearly 25 years. But in November , its new CEO, Gary Kelly, declared that the law had outlived its usefulness and had to be repealed. Then, in June , the mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth, the top executives of Southwest and American and airport officials announced they had come to a compromise that would do away with the Wright amendment — eventually and mostly.
Under the compromise, airlines would be allowed to fly nonstop anywhere out of Love Field — but only to U. International cities were still off limits to nonstop service. Bush signed it into law, which occurred Oct.
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