Dallas Fort Worth International Airport

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (IATA: DFW, ICAO: KDFW, FAA LID: DFW) is the primary international airport serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and the North Texas region, in the U.S. state of Texas.
It is the largest hub for American Airlines, which is headquartered near the airport, and is the third-busiest airport in the world by aircraft movements and the second-busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic in 2022 and 2023, according to the Airports Council International. As of 2021, it is the sixth-busiest international gateway in the United States and the second-busiest international gateway in Texas (behind Houston-IAH). The hub that American Airlines operates at DFW is the second-largest single airline hub in the world and the United States, behind Delta Air Lines's hub in Atlanta.
Located roughly halfway between the major cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW spreads across portions of Dallas and Tarrant counties and includes portions of the cities of Grapevine, Irving, Euless, and Coppell. At 17,207 acres (26.89 sq mi; 69.63 km), DFW is the second-largest airport by land area in the United States after Denver International Airport, covering an area larger than Manhattan in New York City. It has its own post office ZIP Code, 75261, and United States Postal Service city designation ("DFW Airport, TX"), as well as its own police, fire protection, and emergency medical services.
DFW Airport has service to 254 destinations (191 domestic, 63 international) from 28 passenger airlines. As of April 2023, DFW Airport has service to more nonstop destinations than any other airport in North America. It is also the largest carbon neutral airport in the world and the first in North America to achieve this status.
As early as 1927, before the area had an airport, Dallas proposed a joint airport with Fort Worth. Fort Worth declined the offer and thus each city opened its own airport, Love Field in Dallas and Meacham Field in Fort Worth, each of which had scheduled airline service.
In 1940, the Civil Aeronautics Administration earmarked US$1,900,000 (equivalent to $42,600,000 in 2024) for the construction of a Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. American Airlines and Braniff Airways struck a deal with the city of Arlington to build an airport there, but the governments of Dallas and Fort Worth disagreed over its construction and the project was abandoned in 1942. After World War II, Fort Worth annexed the site and developed it into Amon Carter Field with the help of American Airlines. In 1953, Fort Worth transferred its commercial flights from Meacham to the new airport, which was 12 miles (19 km) from Love Field. In 1960, Fort Worth purchased Amon Carter Field and renamed it Greater Southwest International Airport (GSW) in an attempt to compete with Dallas' airport, but GSW's traffic continued to decline relative to Love Field. By the mid-1960s, Fort Worth was getting 1% of Texas air traffic while Dallas was getting 49%, which led to the virtual abandonment of GSW.
The joint airport proposal was revisited in 1961 after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) refused to invest more money into separate Dallas and Fort Worth airports. While airline service had steeply declined at both GSW and Meacham, Love Field was congested and had no more room to expand. Following an order from the federal government in 1964 that it would unilaterally choose a site if the cities could not come to an agreement, officials from the two cities finally agreed on a location for a new regional airport that was just north of the near-abandoned GSW and almost equidistant from the two city centers. The land was purchased by the cities in 1966 and construction began in 1969. The cost of the first phase of Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport was estimated at $700 million.
Voters went to the polls in cities throughout the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex to approve the new North Texas Regional Airport, which was named after the North Texas Commission that was instrumental in the regional airport coming to fruition. The North Texas Commission formed the North Texas Airport Commission to oversee the planning and construction of the giant airport. Area voters approved the airport referendum and the new North Texas Regional Airport would become a reality. However, many Dallas residents remained satisfied with Love Field, and an attempt to establish an independent Dallas Fort Worth Regional Airport Authority—despite strong backing from the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and Dallas mayor J. Erik Jonsson—failed when Dallas voters rejected the proposal by a narrow margin. After further negotiation, the cities instead established an appointed airport board consisting of seven members from Dallas and four from Fort Worth and were able to persuade all existing air carriers at Love, GSW, and Meacham to move to the new regional airport.
Under the original 1967 airport design, DFW was to have pier-shaped terminals perpendicular to a central highway. In 1968, the design was revised to provide for semicircular terminals, which served to isolate loading and unloading areas from the central highway, and to provide additional room for parking in the middle of each semicircle. The plan proposed thirteen such terminals, but only four were built initially.
DFW held an open house and dedication ceremony on September 20–23, 1973, which included the first landing of a supersonic Concorde in the United States, an Air France aircraft en route from Caracas to Paris. The attendees at the airport's dedication included former Texas Governor John Connally, Transportation Secretary Claude Brinegar, U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe. The airport opened for commercial service as Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport on January 13, 1974, at a cost of $875 million (equivalent to $5.5 billion in 2024), which included $65 million for the land and $810 million in total construction costs. At the time of DFW's opening, at 17,500 acres (27.3 sq mi; 7,100 ha; 71 km), it was the largest airport in the world ever constructed in terms of land area (surpassed in October 1975 with the opening of Montréal-Mirabel International Airport). The first flight to land was American Airlines Flight 341 from New York, which had stopped in Memphis and Little Rock. The surrounding cities began to annex the airport property into their city limits shortly after the airport was developed. The name change to Dallas/Fort Worth International did not occur until 1985.
An innovative feature of the airport during its early history was the Vought Airtrans, the world's first operational fully automated people mover system. Later rebranded as the Airport Train and then the TrAAin ("AA" signifying American Airlines), the system ultimately encompassed 13 mi (21 km) of fixed guideways and transported as many as 23,000 persons per day at a maximum speed of 17 mph (27 km/h).
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.
Southwest Airlines had not begun flights when the other airlines agreed to move from Love Field to DFW, and it had only received approval to fly within the state of Texas. It refused to move to DFW because it felt that convenience for Dallas residents was central to its business. After the Airline Deregulation Act was enacted in 1978, Southwest announced flights to other states. Local officials feared that the resumption of long-distance flights at Love would threaten DFW's financial stability, prompting the enaction of the Wright Amendment in 1979, which banned airliners with more than 56 seats from operating between Love Field and airports beyond Texas and its four neighboring states: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
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, as well as extensive domestic service 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 Concordes 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 International 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.
Delta Air Lines also built up a hub operation at DFW, which occupied most of Terminal 4E through the 1990s. The Delta hub peaked around 1991, when Delta had a 35% market share at DFW; its share was halved by 2004, after many of its mainline routes were downgraded to more frequent regional jet service in 2003. Delta constructed a satellite terminal in Terminal E in 1988 to accommodate their hub, which was permanently reopened in May 2019 for American Eagle operations. Delta closed its DFW hub in 2004 in a restructuring of the airline to avoid bankruptcy, cutting its DFW operation to only 21 flights a day from over 250 and redeploying aircraft to hubs in Cincinnati, Atlanta and Salt Lake City. Prior to the closure, Delta had a 17.3% market share at DFW.
In 1989 the airport authority announced plans to rebuild the existing terminals and add two runways. After an environmental impact study was released the following year, the cities of Irving, Euless and Grapevine sued the airport over its extension plans, and the legal battle continued until the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the airport in 1994. The seventh runway opened in 1996. The four primary north–south runways (those closest to the terminals) were all lengthened from 11,388 feet (3,471 m) to their present length of 13,400 feet (4,084 m). The first, 17R/35L, was extended in 1996 (at the same time the new runway was constructed) and the other three (17C/35C, 18L/36R, and 18R/36L) were extended in 2005. DFW is now the only airport in the world with four serviceable paved runways longer than 4,000 metres (13,123 ft).
Terminal D, built for international flights, and DFW Skylink, a modern bidirectional people mover system, opened in 2005. The remaining Airport Train system, which had been mostly replaced by buses in 2003, had been fully decommissioned weeks earlier. The largest commercial aircraft in the world, the Airbus A380, made its inaugural arrival at DFW in September 2014 and was handled at Terminal D.
From 2004 to 2012, DFW was one of two US Army "Personnel Assistance Points" that received US troops returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for rest and recuperation. This ended on March 14, 2012, leaving Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport as the sole Personnel Assistance Point.
In the late 20th century, the Wright Amendment had become unpopular with travelers and business groups because it suppressed local airline competition, but it was backed by powerful political interests including American Airlines, which did not want direct low-fare competition from Southwest Airlines at its DFW fortress hub. Efforts to revise the amendment in the 1980s and early 1990s became mired in lawsuits and political wrangling. In a 2023 statement to The Dallas Morning News, former American Airlines chief executive officer Robert Crandall said that at the time, a Wright repeal was a greater threat to American Airlines than to DFW Airport.
The Wright Amendment status quo was upset between 1996 and 2000, when laws were passed adding new states to the Wright service area, and several airlines began long-distance service from Love Field under the previously unexploited 56-seat exemption. This broke Southwest's monopoly at Love Field, threatened highly profitable American Airlines routes at DFW, and proved that changes to the amendment were now politically viable. Southwest soon began campaigning to repeal the Wright Amendment, but was staunchly opposed by American Airlines, which feared that Southwest would maintain its near-monopoly at Love Field while simultaneously expanding to DFW Airport and possibly Fort Worth Alliance Airport or Meacham Airport.
In a 2006 agreement brokered by Kay Bailey Hutchison, U.S. Senator from Texas, DFW Airport, Dallas, Fort Worth, Southwest, and American agreed to mutually support the repeal, but with a number of conditions. The number of gates at Love Field was permanently capped, and until January 1, 2025, international passenger flights in the metroplex were required to operate from DFW Airport, and Southwest was required to surrender Love Field gates if it or a codeshare agreement partner offered flights from DFW Airport.
On October 13, 2014, the Wright Amendment domestic flight restrictions ended, allowing airlines to fly from Love Field to anywhere in the U.S. Despite the increased local competition, the number of annual enplanements at DFW grew by five million from 2013 to 2015, only slightly less than an approximately six million passenger increase at Love Field during the same period.
Airports Council International (ACI) named DFW Airport the best large airport with more than 40 million passengers in North America for passenger satisfaction in 2016.
In June 2018, DFW Airport opened a fully functioning, free standing emergency room on airport grounds, located in Southgate Plaza near the Airport Headquarters and Rental Car Center. With this opening, the facility became the first actual ER on an airport's property anywhere around the globe.
DFW Airport tentatively completed a $2.7 billion "Terminal Renewal and Improvement Program" (TRIP), which encompassed renovations of three of the original four terminals (A, B, and E). Work on the project began following the conclusion of Super Bowl XLV in February 2011. Terminal A was the first terminal to undergo these renovations, which were completed in January 2017 at a cost of about $1 billion. This was followed by the completion of Terminal E in August 2017 and Terminal B in December 2017. While Terminal C was originally part of the multibillion-dollar renovations, American Airlines in 2014 asked to delay renovations of the terminal.
In early 2023, Frontier Airlines established a crew operating base at DFW and added a gate to accommodate additional flights.
In 2023, DFW served 81,764,044 passengers, a record for the facility, exceeding 80 million passengers for the first time in the airport's 50-year history.
DFW Airport has embarked on a series of expansion projects expected to last until 2028.
The first phase will construct the long-discussed Terminal F, albeit significantly downsized from earlier plans. The 15-gate concourse will cost $1.63 billion and will be built between 2024 and 2026. Previous plans for Terminal F called for 24 gates at a cost of $3.5 billion. Terminal F will have no landside facilities. Passenger and baggage screening and services will be handled in a new expansion of Terminal E, with passengers boarding Skylink to reach Terminal F, and baggage travelling in a tunnel under International Parkway. Terminal F will be built in a way that it could be expanded to 22 gates in the future.
The second phase of the project will include the delayed renovations of Terminal C, adding piers to with additional gates to terminals A and C, and upgrading roadways. The $2.72 billion project will add nine additional gates and will be completed in phases by 2028.
Of the portions of the airport, fewer than 8,000 acres (3,200 ha) reside in Grapevine, fewer than 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) are in Irving, over 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) are in Euless, and 266 acres (108 ha) are in Coppell.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has five terminals and 174 gates; these terminals are in the City of Grapevine. DFW's terminals are designed in a half-circle shape, which minimizes the distance between a passenger's car and airplane, and to reduce traffic on main airport roads. The DFW Skylink automated people mover system allows passengers to quickly travel between gates inside the secured area of the airport, with an average travel time of seven minutes.
Terminal D is the airport's primary international terminal, with CBP (Customs and Border Protection) facilities to process arriving international passengers and has a gate capable of accommodating an Airbus A380.
American Airlines has a presence in every terminal at DFW. Other domestic airlines and some Canadian airlines operate out of Terminal E, while overseas carriers operate out of Terminal D.
International Airlines that provide nonstop service to DFW include: Air Canada, Air France, Avianca, Emirates, Fiji Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, British Airways, Lufthansa, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines, Viva, Volaris, and Aeromexico.
There are two Hyatt branded hotels located in the central terminal area.
The Hyatt Regency DFW International Airport was built in 1978 as the east wing of the Airport Marina Hotel. It originally had an identical twin west wing, located on the opposite side of International Parkway, which was built in 1974 and demolished for construction of Terminal D. It has 811 rooms, 92,000 square feet (8,500 m) of meeting space and four food and beverage outlets. The hotel is located adjacent to Terminal C, with shuttle buses connecting to all terminals.
The Grand Hyatt DFW opened on July 1, 2005 and has 298 rooms, 34,000 square feet (3,200 m) of meeting space and three food and beverage outlets. The hotel is located directly above Terminal D, with direct access to the check-in area.
The DFW Airport area is served by International Parkway (partially State Highway 97 Spur), which runs through the center of the airport, connecting to Airport Freeway (State Highway 183) on the southern side of the airport and John W. Carpenter Freeway (State Highway 114) on the northern side. International Parkway continues north of State Highway 114, carrying the State Highway 121 designation for a short while until its interchange with the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway (I-635), where State Highway 121 continues north as the Sam Rayburn Tollway.
Bus routes serving the airport are operated by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and Trinity Metro. DART operates route 230 from Downtown Irving/Heritage Crossing Station and Southwestern Medical District/Parkland Station to the Remote South Parking facility, and Trinity Metro operates the TRE Link bus route from CentrePort/DFW Airport station.
Three rail systems serve the airport: DART light rail, TEXRail, and the Trinity Railway Express. DART operates light rail from DFW Airport Terminal A station. This provides direct rail service on the Orange Line to Dallas and Las Colinas (with a later extension to DFW Airport North station). TEXRail is a commuter rail service between DFW Airport Terminal B station and T&P Station in downtown Fort Worth. DFW Airport is additionally served by the Trinity Railway Express commuter rail line at CentrePort/DFW Airport Station via shuttle bus to the Remote South parking lot. The line serves both downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth. There is also the DART Silver Line opening in 2024 which will also serve terminal B.
A consolidated rental car facility is located at the south end of the airport and connected to all terminals by a dedicated network of shuttle buses. Hosting ten rental car companies, the center was completed in March 2000.
A cargo facility at 1639 West 23rd Street is located on the airport property. Tenants include China Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The DFW Airport Department of Public Safety provides the airport with its own police, fire protection, and emergency medical services.
The DFW International Airport headquarters is located nearby at 2400 Aviation Drive.
In 1995, the airport opened Founders' Plaza, an observation park dedicated to the founders of DFW Airport. The site offered a panoramic view of the south end of the airport and hosted several significant events, including an employee memorial the day after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the airport's 30th anniversary celebration in 2004. As part of the perimeter taxiway project, Founders' Plaza was closed in 2007 and moved to a new location surrounding a 50-foot (15 m)-tall beacon on the north side of the airport in 2008. The 6-acre (2.4 ha) plaza features a granite monument and sculpture, post-mounted binoculars, piped-in voices of air traffic controllers and shade pavilions. In 2010, a memorial honoring Delta Air Lines Flight 191 was dedicated at the plaza.