According to the Dallas Morning News, Delta Airlines has released a schedule that now includes October 2014 and apparently Delta expects to fly a massive number of flights from Love Field to its own hubs.  By massive, it would appear that Delta has 22 flights to its hubs in Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York La Guardia and Los Angeles.  The only two cities missing are Salt Lake City and Seattle.

Delta wants to use the American Airlines gates at Love Field that it rents today for those flights.  22 flights from 2 gates seems a touch optimistic so I do wonder if Delta has something else up its sleeve.

Southwest has 16 gates and no one is entirely sure if they can have more than that.  American Airlines has 2 gates and United has 2 gates.  According to restrictions put in place in winding down the Wright Amendment, no more gates are supposed to be built.  The real shame of that is that there are several gates across the tarmac from the main terminal originally built for Legend Airlines that would be exceptional for use in a Delta operation.

The City of Dallas and the airport authorities don’t want to allow expansion at Love Field.  They want traffic to be focused on DFW airport but . . . DFW airport is actually pretty full at this point.  There will be a few gates at DFW available for use once Terminal E is renovated but not many and they’ll go quickly.

So why not open up Love Field even more?  I wonder if Delta isn’t planning to sue for more access myself.

In the meantime, let’s ponder for a minute the chance to fly Delta to its hubs from Love Field airport in less than a year.

That’s what I meant by Change, It’s coming.

Filed under: Airline Service, Airports by ajax
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