What if DFW was never built? I know Dallas has kept their airport DAL but what if Dallas and Fort Worth kept separate airports open like the Austin/San Antonio region currently has AUS/SAT?

What would be the impact on the network reach from the split airports over the almost 50 years since the building of DFW?

I'm guessing DAL would be a hub for someone still, but would be incredibly congested while a Fort Worth.....? I don't know.
The North Texas Metroplex would probably see less service now than it does with this situation, but any thoughts on the airline network effects of such a historical path?

Also, what if AUS and SAT built a joint airport back in the 1970s or 80s? Combining their traffic numbers at present, the (AST?) airport would have around 20,000,000 passengers a year, which seems enough for a hub, even though the geography is terrible outside of Mexico-US connections? Would a hypothetical AST see much more international service than AUS and SAT each get currently? How about domestically, would it be a hub? With a combined population area of 4,000,000+ it seems like it could hold one on that basis at least.
Short haul traffic would go down though, as it would be quite far, 45 min+ from Austin and San Antonio (if built halfway between them), so few would drive from Austin south to AST and then fly north to DAL (no DFW here...).

Perhaps they could have located it at San Marcos Regional Airport: https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+M ... 97.8662539

I'm not interested in whether these scenarios will happen, they've been discussed before, but what if they had?

What if...space monsters???? Then what?

Sorry, just how would it have turned out to the present, would AA/DL be able to each have a hub in the metroplex? Would WN serve both airports? Would UA for instance fly to both AFW and DAL from its hubs if there were no DFW to serve?

AFW is not a passenger airport - it's a privately owned cargo airport. FTW was the equivalent to DAL.

deltaffindfw wrote:

AFW is not a passenger airport - it's a privately owned cargo airport. FTW was the equivalent to DAL.

Sorry, FTW then, not AFW
Never been to the Dallas area

Was this topic too crazy?

No one knows what would have transpired. Impossible to answer your queries.

A combined AUS-SAT airport would surely have more international flights and be a major hub. The idea has been floated around in the past. Problem is, the two metro areas are just a tad too far apart from each other.

TransWorldOne wrote:

A combined AUS-SAT airport would surely have more international flights and be a major hub. The idea has been floated around in the past. Problem is, the two metro areas are just a tad too far apart from each other.

Put them 30 miles apart like Dallas and Fort Worth and you have something, 60 miles apart and its to far.

So somewhere between Dallas/Ft. Worth separation and Austin/San Antonio separation is the maximum distance for a joint airport to effectively serve two neighboring cities?

There is also another issue - DAL is close to downtown Dallas. However, FTW (close to downtown FTW) was replaced in 1953 with GSW airport. GSW was located due south of the current DFW airport. So, even Fort Worth saw that their fortunes were better in the middle of the metroplex instead of at FTW. I don't know if they would have moved back from GSW to FTW - but even today, the population boom is still not there west of Fort Worth (it's mainly north). Whereas, there is a good population center east of Dallas. Looking at the communities booming in the metroplex today, you could say that possibly it would look the same if GSW was there. The interesting thing about flights from FTW and GSW is that more than half flew to DAL to connect.

SumChristianus wrote:

What if DFW was never built? I know Dallas has kept their airport DAL but what if Dallas and Fort Worth kept separate airports open like the Austin/San Antonio region currently has AUS/SAT?

Good things happen when led by visionaries. Eric Jonsonn, former Texas Instruments CEO and then Dallas Mayor had the vision for the Metroplex. It took his vision and the skills to navigate thru the endless bickering between Dallas and Ft Worth to make DFW happen.

If someone from Austin has that vision to take Austin from a little town to a metroplex, it can happen.

Why did DFW need to be built if GSW was already located near the current site of DFW? Why couldn't GSW have been expanded instead?

SumChristianus wrote:

TransWorldOne wrote:

A combined AUS-SAT airport would surely have more international flights and be a major hub. The idea has been floated around in the past. Problem is, the two metro areas are just a tad too far apart from each other.

Put them 30 miles apart like Dallas and Fort Worth and you have something, 60 miles apart and its to far.

So somewhere between Dallas/Ft. Worth separation and Austin/San Antonio separation is the maximum distance for a joint airport to effectively serve two neighboring cities?

Austin and San Antonio are closer to 80 miles apart. But, yes, it's just a tad too far for a single airport.

jplatts wrote:

Why did DFW need to be built if GSW was already located near the current site of DFW? Why couldn't GSW have been expanded instead?

Midway/Greater Southwest had an inefficient runway layout and I don't think the site was large enough to accommodate the forecast traffic. Most importantly, though, it was a couple of miles closer to Ft Worth than it was to Dallas. I believe the DFW control tower is exactly equidistant (17.2 mi) from each city.

How three terminals ended up being built on the Dallas side and only one on the Ft Worth side, though, I don't know that story. I guess 2W was the only complete terminal at the time and had the BN hub.

vadodara wrote:

SumChristianus wrote:

What if DFW was never built? I know Dallas has kept their airport DAL but what if Dallas and Fort Worth kept separate airports open like the Austin/San Antonio region currently has AUS/SAT?

Good things happen when led by visionaries. Eric Jonsonn, former Texas Instruments CEO and then Dallas Mayor had the vision for the Metroplex. It took his vision and the skills to navigate thru the endless bickering between Dallas and Ft Worth to make DFW happen.

The cities of Dallas and Ft Worth had a gun to their head because the federal government gave them an ultimatum--build a joint airport or we won't give you any more federal grants.

Those initial Metroplex commercials and advertising materials are a bit scary to look at now, but I guess nobody can deny it worked.

In order to have had something like SAN/AUS be one market would have taken a visionary 40 years ago, and the days of being able to put together something as massive and multi-jurisdictional as DFW disappeared with 29¢ gas.

If your premise had occurred -- DFW not built -- then something would have been done by Dallas; Love is a lot of things, but an airport that matched Dallas' ambitions (especially in that era) was never one of them. Too old, too much GA, too prone to controversy, too small to be worth the arguments. Dallas would have built something else. And that's where it goes from informed speculation into spitballing.

[quote="chidino"]In order to have had something like SAN/AUS be one market

SAT is San Antonio and SAN is San Diego which would be quite a stretch.

chidino wrote:

In order to have had something like SAN/AUS be one market would have taken a visionary 40 years ago, and the days of being able to put together something as massive and multi-jurisdictional as DFW disappeared with 29¢ gas.

If your premise had occurred -- DFW not built -- then something would have been done by Dallas; Love is a lot of things, but an airport that matched Dallas' ambitions (especially in that era) was never one of them. Too old, too much GA, too prone to controversy, too small to be worth the arguments. Dallas would have built something else. And that's where it goes from informed speculation into spitballing.

Southwest Airlines (WN) was started by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King in order to take advantage of the facilities that would be available at DAL subsequent to the opening of DFW. Southwest Airlines also originally had a policy of serving all of its destinations nonstop from DAL back in the 1970's and early 1980's, but that policy was ended with the enactment of the Wright Amendment and WN's entry into markets that it could not serve nonstop from DAL under the Wright Amendment in 1982.

WN used to also serve BPT, CRP, HRL, and IAH in Texas nonstop from DAL, but WN no longer serves any of these 4 destinations nonstop from DAL. WN had also pulled out of BPT in 1980 and IAH in 2005. WN still does have nonstop service to CRP and HRL from HOU, and WN also has 1 daily nonstop in each direction between HRL and AUS.

jetero wrote:

jplatts wrote:

Why did DFW need to be built if GSW was already located near the current site of DFW? Why couldn't GSW have been expanded instead?

Midway/Greater Southwest had an inefficient runway layout and I don't think the site was large enough to accommodate the forecast traffic. Most importantly, though, it was a couple of miles closer to Ft Worth than it was to Dallas. I believe the DFW control tower is exactly equidistant (17.2 mi) from each city.

How three terminals ended up being built on the Dallas side and only one on the Ft Worth side, though, I don't know that story. I guess 2W was the only complete terminal at the time and had the BN hub.

Also had to do with the direction the roads were constructed. Access to the passenger terminal was only available on the west side (from Fort Worth) and the cost of constructing an easier access route from the east was probably cost prohibitive.

us330 wrote:

jetero wrote:

jplatts wrote:

Why did DFW need to be built if GSW was already located near the current site of DFW? Why couldn't GSW have been expanded instead?

Midway/Greater Southwest had an inefficient runway layout and I don't think the site was large enough to accommodate the forecast traffic. Most importantly, though, it was a couple of miles closer to Ft Worth than it was to Dallas. I believe the DFW control tower is exactly equidistant (17.2 mi) from each city.

How three terminals ended up being built on the Dallas side and only one on the Ft Worth side, though, I don't know that story. I guess 2W was the only complete terminal at the time and had the BN hub.

Also had to do with the direction the roads were constructed. Access to the passenger terminal was only available on the west side (from Fort Worth) and the cost of constructing an easier access route from the east was probably cost prohibitive.

Can you explain? I'm not following . . .

TransWorldOne wrote:

A combined AUS-SAT airport would surely have more international flights and be a major hub. The idea has been floated around in the past. Problem is, the two metro areas are just a tad too far apart from each other.

This. San Antonio and Austin are just a little too far apart for this to be a viable idea and had it gone forward I'm convinced the shared airport would have ended up like YMX.

jetero wrote:

Can you explain? I'm not following . . .

With all due respect to the planning authorities at the time, from today's lens it doesn't take much to see that GSW wasn't optimally planned. For one, US330's comment about the distance from Dallas--at the time an even bigger portion of the local market than it likely is now, made travel to GSW unfeasible especially when DAL is right in the center of much of Dallas' wealth--and even moreso during the 1960s as the northern suburbs at the time were well, farmland. On top of a longer drive, the entrance being located on the fort worth side not only added time, but just made it flat out inconvenient so people would have had to drive around the airport perimeter to enter the terminal area or construct a costly underpass underneath the airport. And, a huge planning oversight IMO is that GSW had three intersecting runways whereas DAL had two parallels with one cross wind. Even if GSW developed, if it existed today and wanted to be competitive enough to support at least some sort of focus city operation it would likely not be even close to its current form, unlike it's much better replacement a few miles to the north, known as DFW. There's a reason why airlines did not apply to fly there en masse: heck, they had to be forced to leave DAL and migrate to DFW.

In short, why should bulk of the passengers drive all this way to support an airport entirely in a different county while abandoning a fully functioning one right near where they live and work? What planners of DFW got right was they located it north enough to be out of the way for traffic to flow between Dallas and Ft. Worth, and parallel runways allowed for simultaneous ops. Politically, having the entrance be equidistant/equally inconvenient may have helped.

jetero wrote:

How three terminals ended up being built on the Dallas side and only one on the Ft Worth side, though, I don't know that story. I guess 2W was the only complete terminal at the time and had the BN hub.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe all five terminals are actually located in Ft. Worth with just a few of the runways in Dallas. I don't know what the tax and revenue arrangements are, however.

chidino wrote:

If your premise had occurred -- DFW not built -- then something would have been done by Dallas; Love is a lot of things, but an airport that matched Dallas' ambitions (especially in that era) was never one of them. Too old, too much GA, too prone to controversy, too small to be worth the arguments. Dallas would have built something else. And that's where it goes from informed speculation into spitballing.

Exactly. What gets forgotten is that by the time DAL closed it was at capacity and prone to massive congestion so something had to give. Given the real estate prices around there and the NIMBYism in place at the time and even today, there was no way that DAL could have raised the funds to purchase land, much less built another runway. If DFW didn't get built, something else would have and whether that was DFW or something east or south of there and whether there would have been a split ops with DAL, who knows.

To relay that to the other half of the topic: SAT and AUS are both nowhere near congestion and have ample room for further expansion. DAL didn't have that luxury so something would have happened.

enilria wrote:

What if...space monsters???? Then what?

They wouldn't have survived rising fuel costs like Concorde and tri-and quad-jets. Runway length and noise also may have been issues.

At 65-70 million PAX a year, DAL would be pretty packed by now that a new airport would've been proposed to relieve it, or perhaps the airport renovated ala ATL/LHR to be able to handle such traffic most efficiently. It serves a good niche as a hub/focus city for Southwest, for people who don't want to drive too far from Dallas.

Even if Austin and San Antonio were much closer like the DFW metroplex, I doubt it would spell a dozen transatlantic flights or transpacks, or a flight to DXB. Never really saw the Central Texas metro area as having such high travel demands in general, and consolidating it may not be enough. Or rather, I don't see business ties being as lucrative in AUS or SA like in Houston and Dallas to drive up demand for longhaul flights.

Just my feelings on the matter.

So if AUS has about 14 million and SAT 8 million, and both airports were combined hypothetically, we'd have 22 million a year, so service would resemble like that of SAN. Nothing bloated like DFW or even IAH.

CarlosSi wrote:

At 65-70 million PAX a year, DAL would be pretty packed by now that a new airport would've been proposed to relieve it, or perhaps the airport renovated ala ATL/LHR to be able to handle such traffic most efficiently. It serves a good niche as a hub/focus city for Southwest, for people who don't want to drive too far from Dallas.

How about the converse, as Commavia has suggested, closing DAL in lieu of DFW entirely. Would WN be larger in the Dallas market with greater potential gate access (no cap at DFW), or smaller due to having to directly compete against AA?

CarlosSi wrote:

Even if Austin and San Antonio were much closer like the DFW metroplex, I doubt it would spell a dozen transatlantic flights or transpacks, or a flight to DXB. Never really saw the Central Texas metro area as having such high travel demands in general, and consolidating it may not be enough. Or rather, I don't see business ties being as lucrative in AUS or SA like in Houston and Dallas to drive up demand for longhaul flights.

Just my feelings on the matter.

So if AUS has about 14 million and SAT 8 million, and both airports were combined hypothetically, we'd have 22 million a year, so service would resemble like that of SAN. Nothing bloated like DFW or even IAH.

Doesn't a lot of SAT demand leak to AUS for better service, especially for the long-haul flights?

Hope this hasn't been an entirely udicorous topic. To me "what if" helps to understand the "why" and "how" of an idea/topic.
Thank you

SumChristianus wrote:

CarlosSi wrote:

At 65-70 million PAX a year, DAL would be pretty packed by now that a new airport would've been proposed to relieve it, or perhaps the airport renovated ala ATL/LHR to be able to handle such traffic most efficiently. It serves a good niche as a hub/focus city for Southwest, for people who don't want to drive too far from Dallas.

How about the converse, as Commavia has suggested, closing DAL in lieu of DFW entirely. Would WN be larger in the Dallas market with greater potential gate access (no cap at DFW), or smaller due to having to directly compete against AA?

CarlosSi wrote:

The reason these hypothetical questions get tougher to answer is because AA wasn’t the only competitor and didn’t really ever hub at DAL: at the time BN was the top player in the Dallas market and the only one to have their own terminal at DFW when it opened. It’s hard if not impossible to say who affected whom and what happened how.

WN’s strategic advantage was multifold: intra-state flights weren’t regulated so they could charge whatever they wanted, they were young so weren’t burdened by an expensive workforce—glamorous but expensive— and a fleet of aging 727s, 707s, and 747s that crossed the americas and both oceans and were all painted in different colors. And, DAL allowed WN to reach the core of the Dallas market who didn’t(and still don’t) have to spend 40 minutes driving to DFW to take a 30 minute flight. WN’s claim to operating out of DAL was that they never signed the agreement to fly from DFW when it opened.

Others know better than I about BN’s woes, but DAL protected WN then like it does now and WN’s growth speaks for itself, partly driven by low costs and a protected hub. If i’m not mistaken, WN at one point gave away bottles of whiskey on flights and forced BN to match. BN went belly up for several reasons, but I can’t talk about AA at this stage with regards to WN since the DFW hub was launched in the early 80s, and AA was still based in NY.

vadodara wrote:

SumChristianus wrote:

What if DFW was never built? I know Dallas has kept their airport DAL but what if Dallas and Fort Worth kept separate airports open like the Austin/San Antonio region currently has AUS/SAT?

Good things happen when led by visionaries. Eric Jonsonn, former Texas Instruments CEO and then Dallas Mayor had the vision for the Metroplex. It took his vision and the skills to navigate thru the endless bickering between Dallas and Ft Worth to make DFW happen.

If someone from Austin has that vision to take Austin from a little town to a metroplex, it can happen.

Not sure if you have ever been to Austin if you think it's a little town lol. I for one am glad we are not some giant blob of a metroplex.

Personally I don't think having a single airport in between Austin and San Antonio was ever a good idea from the get go. Even though 50 miles separate the two, from the city limits (it's exactly 80 from the state capitol building to the Alamo), that is pretty far to drive for most people nor would it have been convenient, even less so now. It makes more sense to have two achor airports serving the region. AUS will be getting more international flights, so the question of whether we would have had them sooner or more of them is just conjecture at this point. I'm quite happy with how things turned out and that Austin has the airport that it has. It was vision that got us ABIA as plans were already in place to build an international airport near Manor father east from the city, the airbase closure came at an opportune time and city leaders jumped at it.