Editor's comments: 
Chip Northrup furnished the following op-ed that appeared in The Dallas Morning News, June 20, 2000.
 

City shouldn't be hasty on Love Field

By James "Chip" Northrup   (The Dallas Morning News, Viewpoint, published June 20, 2000)

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that several Dallas City Council members have signed a petition to open additional gates at Love Field to American Airlines before the city can complete a comprehensive plan for the airport - a plan that presumably might recommend against such gates.
After all, this is what the City Council members were paid to do - by someone.

As a lifelong resident of the Love Field area, I have watched the airport recover like a phoenix from its closure three decades ago.  I remember when the original terminal building was on Lemmon Avenue, up the street from where Legend Airlines now is. I remember going to that terminal building to welcome a celebrity to Dallas - Leo Carillo, who played Pancho on the TV show The Cisco Kid. I remember when the swankiest restaurant in town was the Luau Room at the new terminal building.

A loophole in the covenants that created Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - found by a clever lawyer, Herb Kelleher - was enough to launch Southwest Airlines.  A loophole in an old city lease to Braniff Airways - found by a clever lawyer, Bruce Ledbetter - was enough to start Legend.  Finding no loopholes of its own, American seeks to create an opening by fiat. Hand-delivered by members of the City Council.

I am by no means "anti-American." American has done wonders for Dallas and Fort Worth. My father-in-law worked for C.R. Smith, and former chairmen Al Casey and Bob Crandall are good family friends.  American is one of the oldest and largest employers in the metroplex.  It has been a
well-run operation from day one. If any airline deserves to be at Love Field, it is American. It has paid its dues.

A carefully controlled increase in competition at Love Field would be beneficial to the flying public - but not at the expense of an already overtaxed parking and traffic system or the peace and quiet of the neighborhoods that have come to surround the airport on all sides.

Love Field, named after a World War I ace, was built in the 1920s amid cotton fields. Its usage grew during a time when many passengers arrived by taxi or were dropped off for long-haul flights to New York or Chicago - not day trips to Austin. Takeoffs and landings peaked in 1973 at 446,160, with all gates operating and no D/FW Airport. Almost double what they were last year.

But the number of parking spaces and the amount of traffic during the airport's heyday were dramatically less, perhaps half of what they are today. If all gates were reopened, vehicular traffic and parking could become a nightmare. And the neighborhoods that sprouted around it before
and after World War II did so during the era of the prop plane and the turboprop, not ear-splitting jets. These are quantitative and qualitative matters that any master plan should take into thoughtful
consideration.

Airlines moved from Love Field because they had outgrown its capacity to handle additional traffic and the newer jets. Should it become overburdened again, it would lose the convenience that it represents for short-haul flights. Like other inner-city airports, Love Field easily could become an inconvenient mess.

Most other inner-city airports of Love Field's vintage in other cities have been closed, re-zoned and their land sold off for development. Only 5% of Love Field's 1,000 acres are actually developed - the rest is asphalt and weeds. This represents the lowest density  development in the City. Almost any other land use would bring in more in property taxes, sales taxes, etc. Private planes could be re-located to "Executive Airport", the former Red Bird, or to the Naval Air Station - which is on City land. This would represent a windfall to the City in the sale or lease of the 1,000 acres, and in on-going taxes. The local economist, Prof. Bernard Weinstein, came to a similar conclusion in one
study.

For once, the City Council has the opportunity to act on Love Field in a manner that doesn't react to loopholes or hunker down for litigation. It can exercise its leadership with an objective study of what the airport was like when all the gates were in use and what it can become under present conditions and constraints.


James "Chip" Northrup is a local philanthropist and civic activist.