01/12/99

By Tony Hartzel / The Dallas Morning News

Twenty-five years ago on Wednesday, North Texas opened a port to the world. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has soared ever since.

How high?

"D/FW Airport is the single most important investment that we made as a city and in Dallas-Fort Worth in the last 50 years," Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk said. "Over the next five to seven years, it is going to be the most successful and busiest airport in the world."

For now, second-busiest airport in the world will have to do.

To mark the silver anniversary, the D/FW Airport Board will host a luncheon Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency-D/FW Airport. Banners highlighting D/FW's milestone will hang throughout the airport.

A new sculpture at the airport's east-side Founders Plaza was dedicated last fall to celebrate the airport's fficial dedication.

On Jan. 13, 1974, D/FW Airport opened with four terminals and 66 gates intended to serve 25,000 daily passengers.

Now, the airport serves an average of 165,000 passengers daily from four terminals and 122 gates.

"We really didn't know how to envision that kind of growth," said J. Lee Johnson, a member of the Fort Worth delegation that negotiated with Dallas officials in the mid-1960s to build D/FW.

Today, the airport is North Texas' biggest cash cow - an $11.2 billion economic engine responsible directly or indirectly for creating 211,000 jobs.

And once the dispute over the future of Dallas Love Field is resolved, D/FW is ready to embark on billions of dollars in new projects at the 17,800-acre facility.

"At a time when aviation was at a fairly infant stage the airport's planners were thinking toward the future," said airport executive director Jeff Fegan. "They knew that for this region to be successful, air transportation would have to be superior."

Interestingly, controversy between Dallas and Fort Worth gave birth to D/FW Airport. Both cities wanted to build a major airport in their cities.

The federal government wouldn't pay for two new airports to accommodate increasing air traffic and strongly urged both cities to cooperate on one large

regional airport.

In 1967, representatives of both cities hatched the plan for D/FW Airport at a small Arlington motel along what is now Interstate 30. Over coffee and doughnuts over a period of months, the airport was planned.

"We met week after week," Mr. Johnson said. "Then, all of a sudden, everyone decided this is what we ought to do."

Planning and construction took six years.

Sometime next year, D/FW Airport is expected to replace Chicago's O'Hare Airport to become the world's busiest. Meantime, D/FW is simply trying to keep up with the one-way growth trend of the last 25 years.

A Terminal B expansion is set to open next month and construction on a $104 million rental car facility is in full gear and due to open in spring 2000.

Also planned is a $675 million people-mover system that will eventually connect with commuter rail service between Dallas and Fort Worth. Rail service between the two cities should begin in late 2000. Once construction started, the people mover would take seven years to build, airport officials said.

"We've got so much going for us because of where we are located and the way the airport is managed," said airport board member Robert Fernandez.

An airport should be run in a business-like manner, and its passengers treated like customers - not as part of a captive audience, said Mr. Fegan, the executive director.

These days, the airport is placing high priority on expanding its international passenger and air cargo service.

In the last six years, the number of international passengers has increased 85 percent - from 2.1 million passengers to an estimated 3.9 million.

Since 1995 alone, airlines serving D/FW have added 11 international destinations for a total of 27.

The airport's focus on international flights is a testament to the goals of former Dallas mayor Annette Strauss, D/FW board chairwoman Betty Culbreath said.

"She worked so hard on making Dallas an international city," Ms. Culbreath said. Mrs. Strauss died last month.

And though D/FW faces increasing competition for air-cargo business at nearby Alliance Airport, Ms. Culbreath said, "We have our niche in the world marketplace. It is a strategic plan to market our airport as a cargo airport. Nobody ever thought of that [here before D/FW] because we are so far inland."

Mr. Fegan predicted that much of the airport's open land will be filled with air-cargo facilities in the next 20 years.

D/FW Airport has a $2 billion expansion plan over the next 10 years, but other major airports, such as those in Los Angeles and Miami, are so landlocked that similar projects would cost up to six times as much, he said.

"Regardless of where we are today, international cargo and air service will do more than anything to transform this area into a global economy," Mr. Fegan said.

But the controversy involving Dallas Love Field is a cloud hanging over D/FW's future, Mr. Fegan said.

The airport plans to join Fort Worth's appeal of a December federal ruling that would allow long-haul flights from Love Field. That ruling contradicts a recent state district court decision that ordered the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth to abide by an agreement that restricts flights at Love Field.

But on Wednesday, the two cities will put aside their differences to commemorate their accomplishment of 25 years ago.

"The airport has had an extraordinary impact in changing the breadth and diversity of our economy, of our population and of our growth," Mr. Kirk said.