Good post. The two cities had to go along with DFW. Ft Worth could not opt out. FTW is the key stakeholder that has lost the most. It was hardly frivolous for Wright to do what he did, and frankly he could have been more restrictive. That was at a time when the CAB TAC deregulation Texas and Uncle Sam were overlapping. And SWA slipped through the cracks.
Uh, sorry, Flop but what exactly has Ft Worth actually lost?
Ever? Please tell us specifically.
DFW Airport is one of the largest and busiest in the entire world, and is a HUGE friggin' source income for both Dallas
and Ft Worth--collectively in money spent by travelers in the airport and surrounding area hotels/restaurants, hundreds of millions in wages paid to tens of thousands of employees who work at the airport and spend their money at home in those two cities, along with other ancillary income (rental cars, etc., etc., etc).
Today, the FAA states you have to have a "functional relationship" with a municipality. Apparantly it's been interpreted in some places to mean secondary airports' gates should be common use, or have plenty of common use gates. Why the hell that wasn't what was done with DAL in the first place, I don't know. Other than the obvious of course: protect and aid SWA, all these years.
Uh, it
was done at Dallas Love in the first place, Flop--I can't imagine why you don't know, other than your continued head-in-the-sand intransigency on the situation. Well, that and your unwavering belief that the entire universe colludes to protect and favor Southwest, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Up until very recently, there were literally
dozens of unused gates at Dallas Love, available for use by ANY damn airline who wanted to use them. Southwest used 16 gates, AA and CO used two each, sporadically or subleased. The rest of the gates sat empty for
decades, because no airline wanted them. None.
It's only been recently that anyone has actually given a crap at all about any of this--when American Airlines forced an artificial limitation of 20 gates total to protect their overall Dallas monopoly. Southwest still used the same 16 damn gates that we used for decades, but now you cry foul and say we should give some of
them up to be "fair"? WTF?! Where was your outrage when American limited them for no reason, other than their own greed? Why don't you lobby to eliminate that stupid and arbitrary limitation? Then there'd be plenty of gates for everyone who wanted some.
Oh, I know--then you wouldn't be able to blame Southwest. Bummer for you, Flop.
Bubba