{"id":184495,"date":"2025-08-29T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/184495\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T12:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:00:17","slug":"why-dallas-love-field-doesnt-have-international-flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/184495\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Dallas Love Field doesn\u2019t have international flights"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Texas passengers may have noticed for many years that international flights aren\u2019t available from Dallas Love Field Airport<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it\u2019s illegal to do so.<\/p>\n

In 2006, federal legislation, known as the Wright Amendment Reform Act<\/a>, was passed to slowly phase out the restrictions of the infamous Wright Amendment<\/a>, which limited where Southwest Airlines <\/a>and other carriers could fly, over an eight-year period following a five-party compromise between Southwest, DFW International Airport, American Airlines<\/a>, the city of Dallas, city of Fort Worth and the DFW Airport Board.<\/p>\n

The agreement came two years after then-Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly<\/a> demanded the Wright Amendment be repealed.<\/p>\n

Aviation News<\/p>\n

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However, the legislation that established the historic repeal had one global stipulation: no international flights.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo person shall provide, or offer to provide, air transportation of passengers for compensation or hire between Love Field, Texas, and any point or points outside the 50 States or the District of Columbia on a nonstop basis, and no official or employee of the federal government may take any action to make or designate Love Field as an initial point of entry into the United States or a last point of departure from the United States,\u201d the law says.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a major change for Love Field customers, as the airport had essentially been blocked from flying internationally for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

How we got here<\/p>\n

In 1979, Congress passed the Wright Amendment as part of the Air Transportation Competition Act<\/a>, limiting nonstop commercial flights from Love Field to destinations only in Texas and four neighboring states: Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico<\/a>. The law, spearheaded by former House Speaker Rep. Jim Wright, D-Fort Worth<\/a>, was meant to ensure the older and smaller Love Field didn\u2019t compete with the newer Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The law was changed a few times. In 1997, Congress added Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi to the list of states Love Field could fly directly to. In 2005, Missouri was added to the list. <\/p>\n

Love Field has long been the headquarters of Southwest since its founding. The carrier operates 18 of the airport\u2019s 20 gates, while Fort Worth-based American Airlines has established its fortress hub at DFW Airport. <\/p>\n

On Oct. 13, 2014<\/a>, the Wright Amendment was repealed and Southwest and other carriers were allowed to fly anywhere in the U.S. from Love Field.<\/p>\n

Some restrictions of the law are still enforced through the five-party agreement, including a voluntary noise curfew and the banning of international flights. Despite the restrictions, the once-military air base is now the 32nd busiest airport in the country and had nearly 18 million passengers last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, Southwest does fly several international routes to locations in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, and is even in talks with its employees to expand beyond that<\/a>. That\u2019s been a big boost for Southwest airports such as Houston Hobby and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But customers shouldn\u2019t expect any of those potential flights to originate from Love Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Texas passengers may have noticed for many years that international flights aren\u2019t available from Dallas Love Field…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":184496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[10314,5229,1596,18466,18817,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-184495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-airlines","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-love-field","12":"tag-southwest-airlines","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115111947428372122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}