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The airport opened for commercial service as Dallas/Fort Worth
Regional Airport on January 13, 1974, at a cost of $700 million. The
name change to Dallas/Fort Worth International did not occur until 1985.
When it opened, DFW had four terminals, numbered 2W, 2E, 3E and 4E.
During its first year of operations, the airport was served by American Airlines, Braniff
International Airways, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eastern Air Lines, Frontier
Airlines, Ozark Air Lines, Rio Airways and Texas International Airlines.
The Wright Amendment of 1979 banned long distance flights into Love Field, leaving
Southwest Airlines as Love Field's only jet airline and operating solely as an intrastate air
carrier in the state of Texas.
Braniff International Airways was a major operator at DFW in the airport's early years,
operating a hub from Terminal 2W with international flights to South America and
Mexico from 1974, London from 1978 and Europe and Asia from 1979, before ceasing
all operations in 1982.
During the Braniff hub era, DFW was one of only four U.S. airports to have scheduled
Concorde service; Braniff commenced scheduled Concorde service from Dallas to
Washington from 1979 to 1980, using British Airways and Air France aircraft temporarily
re-registered to Braniff while flying within the United States. British Airways later briefly
flew Concorde to Dallas in 1988 as a substitute for its ordinarily scheduled DC-10
service.
Following airline deregulation, American Airlines, which had already been one of the
largest carriers serving the Dallas/Fort Worth area for many years, established its first
hub at DFW on June 11, 1981. [
American finished moving its headquarters from Grand Prairie, Texas to a building in
Fort Worth located on the site of the old Greater Southwest Airport, near DFW Airport
on January 17, 1983; the airline began leasing the facility from the airport, which owns
the facility. By 1984, the American hub occupied most of Terminal 3E and part of
Terminal 2E. American's hub grew to fill all of Terminal 2E by 1991. American also
began long-haul international service from DFW, adding flights to London in 1982 and
Tokyo in 1987.
KDFW Dallas
July 2017
www.alliance-airways.net
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