Planning As early as 1927, before the area had an airport, Dallas proposed a joint airport with Fort Worth. Fort Worth declined the offer and thus each city opened its own airport,
Love Field in Dallas and
Meacham Field in Fort Worth, each of which had scheduled airline service. In 1940, the Civil Aeronautics Administration earmarked for the construction of a Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport.
American Airlines and
Braniff Airways struck a deal with the city of
Arlington to build an airport there, but the governments of Dallas and Fort Worth disagreed over its construction and the project was abandoned in 1942. After
World War II, Fort Worth annexed the site and developed it into
Amon Carter Field with the help of American Airlines. In 1953, Fort Worth transferred its commercial flights from Meacham to the new airport, which was from Love Field. In 1960, Fort Worth purchased Amon Carter Field and renamed it
Greater Southwest International Airport (GSW) in an attempt to compete with Dallas' airport, but GSW's traffic continued to decline relative to Love Field. By the mid-1960s, Fort Worth was getting 1% of Texas air traffic while Dallas was getting 49%, which led to the virtual abandonment of GSW. The joint airport proposal was revisited in 1961 after the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) refused to invest more money into separate Dallas and Fort Worth airports. While airline service had steeply declined at both GSW and Meacham, Love Field was congested and had no more room to expand. Following an order from the federal government in 1964 that it would unilaterally choose a site if the cities could not come to an agreement, officials from the two cities finally agreed on a location for a new regional airport that was just north of the near-abandoned GSW and almost equidistant from the two city centers. The land was purchased by the cities in 1966 and construction began in 1969. The cost of the first phase of Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport was estimated at $700 million. Voters went to the polls in cities throughout the
Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex to approve the new North Texas Regional Airport, which was named after the North Texas Commission that was instrumental in the regional airport coming to fruition. The North Texas Commission formed the North Texas Airport Commission to oversee the planning and construction of the giant airport. Area voters approved the airport referendum and the new North Texas Regional Airport would become a reality. However, many Dallas residents remained satisfied with Love Field, and an attempt to establish an independent Dallas Fort Worth Regional Airport Authority—despite strong backing from the
Dallas Chamber of Commerce and Dallas mayor
J. Erik Jonsson—failed when Dallas voters rejected the proposal by a narrow margin. After further negotiation, the cities instead established an appointed airport board consisting of seven members from Dallas and four from Fort Worth and were able to persuade all existing air carriers at Love, GSW, and Meacham to move to the new regional airport. Under the original 1967 airport design, DFW was to have pier-shaped terminals perpendicular to a central highway. In 1968, the design was revised to provide for semicircular terminals, which served to isolate loading and unloading areas from the central highway, and to provide additional room for parking in the middle of each semicircle. The plan proposed thirteen such terminals, but only four were built initially.
Opening and early operations DFW held an open house and dedication ceremony on September 20–23, 1973, which included the first landing of a supersonic
Concorde in the United States, that being pre-production aircraft F-WTSA wearing the colors of both
Air France and
British Airways, en route from
Caracas to
Paris. The airport opened for commercial service as
Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport on January 13, 1974, at a cost of $875 million (equivalent to $5.5 billion in 2024), which included $65 million for the land and $810 million in total construction costs. At the time of DFW's opening, its property of made it the largest airport in the world in terms of land area. The first flight to land was American Airlines Flight 341 from New York, which had stopped in Memphis and Little Rock. The surrounding cities began to annex the airport property into their city limits shortly after the airport was developed. When it opened, DFW had four terminals, numbered 2W, 2E, 3E and 4E. During its first year of operations, the airport was served by American Airlines,
Braniff International Airways,
Continental Airlines,
Delta Air Lines,
Eastern Air Lines,
Frontier Airlines,
Ozark Air Lines,
Rio Airways and
Texas International Airlines.
Southwest Airlines had not begun flights when the other airlines agreed to move from Love Field to DFW, and it had only received approval to fly within the state of Texas. It refused to move to DFW because it felt that convenience for Dallas residents was central to its business. After the
Airline Deregulation Act was enacted in 1978, Southwest announced flights to other states. Local officials feared that the resumption of long-distance flights at Love would threaten DFW's financial stability, prompting the enaction of the
Wright Amendment in 1979, which banned airliners with more than 56 seats from operating between Love Field and airports beyond Texas and its four neighboring states: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. During the Braniff hub era, DFW was one of only four U.S. airports to have scheduled Concorde service; Braniff commenced scheduled Concorde service from Dallas to Washington from 1979 to 1980, using
British Airways and Air France aircraft temporarily re-registered to Braniff while flying within the United States. British Airways later briefly flew Concordes to Dallas in 1988 as a substitute for its ordinarily scheduled DC-10 service. American finished moving its headquarters from
Grand Prairie, Texas, to a building in Fort Worth located on the site of the old
Greater Southwest International Airport, near DFW Airport on January 17, 1983; the airline began leasing the facility from the airport, which owns the facility. By 1984, the American hub occupied most of Terminal 3E and part of Terminal 2E. American's hub grew to fill all of Terminal 2E by 1991. American also began long-haul international service from DFW, adding flights to London in 1982 and Tokyo in 1987. Delta Air Lines also built up a hub operation at DFW, which occupied most of Terminal 4E through the 1990s.
The Wright Amendment In the late 20th century, the Wright Amendment had become unpopular with travelers and business groups because it suppressed local airline competition, but it was backed by powerful political interests including American Airlines, which did not want direct
low-fare competition from Southwest Airlines at its DFW
fortress hub. Efforts to revise the amendment in the 1980s and early 1990s became mired in lawsuits and political wrangling. In a 2023 statement to
The Dallas Morning News, former American Airlines
chief executive officer Robert Crandall said that at the time, a Wright repeal was a greater threat to American Airlines than to DFW Airport. Southwest soon began campaigning to repeal the Wright Amendment, but was staunchly opposed by American Airlines, which feared that Southwest would maintain its near-monopoly at Love Field while simultaneously expanding to DFW Airport and possibly
Fort Worth Alliance Airport or
Meacham Airport. On October 13, 2014, the Wright Amendment domestic flight restrictions ended, allowing airlines to fly from Love Field to anywhere in the U.S. Despite the increased competition, the number of annual enplanements at DFW grew by five million from 2013 to 2015, only slightly less than an approximately six million passenger increase at Love Field during the same period. In 1996, Delta subleased the satellite terminal to
Atlantic Southeast Airlines, their
Delta Connection commuter partner. Terminal operations in the late 1990s were controlled by the DFW Airport (Terminal 2W), American Airlines (2E and 3E, a total of 44 gates and 56 airplane parking spaces), and Delta Airlines (4E and the 4E satellite). The airport would eventually convert the American Eagle terminal north of Terminal A to its DFW Corporate Aviation facility in 2010 in preparation for
Super Bowl XLV. The corporate aviation facility has no gates as it caters to privately-owned business jets and their clientele who do not pass through
security checks. Delta closed its DFW hub in 2004 and placed its old Terminal E (formerly 4E) satellite in mothballs. Delta was in the midst of a restructuring to avoid bankruptcy, cutting its DFW operation to only 21 flights a day from over 250. Delta redeployed aircraft to hubs in Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. Prior to the closure, Delta had a 17.3% market share at DFW. Terminal D, built for international flights, and
Skylink, a modern bidirectional
people mover system, opened in 2005. The remaining Airport Train system, which had been mostly replaced by buses in 2003, had been fully decommissioned weeks earlier. From 2004 to 2012, DFW was one of two US Army "Personnel Assistance Points" that received US troops returning from wars in
Iraq and
Afghanistan for rest and recuperation. This ended on March 14, 2012, leaving
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport as the sole Personnel Assistance Point. DFW Airport tentatively completed a $2.7 billion "Terminal Renewal and Improvement Program" (TRIP), which encompassed renovations of three of the original four terminals (A, B, and E). Work on the project began following the conclusion of
Super Bowl XLV in February 2011. Terminal A was the first terminal to undergo these renovations, which were completed in January 2017 at a cost of about $1 billion. This was followed by the completion of Terminal E in August 2017 and Terminal B in December 2017. While Terminal C was originally part of the multibillion-dollar renovations, American Airlines in 2014 asked to delay renovations of the terminal.
Airports Council International (ACI) named DFW Airport the best large airport with more than 40 million passengers in North America for passenger satisfaction in 2016. In June 2018, DFW Airport opened a fully functioning, free standing
emergency room on airport grounds, located in Southgate Plaza near the Airport Headquarters and Rental Car Center. With this opening, the facility became the first actual ER on an airport's property anywhere around the globe. The unused Terminal E satellite (the old Delta satellite terminal built in 1989) was remodeled and opened in May 2019 for American Eagle operations, simultaneously expanding it to 15 gates from its original 9. In early 2023,
Frontier Airlines established a crew operating base at DFW and added a gate to accommodate additional flights. In 2023, DFW served 81,764,044 passengers, a record for the facility, exceeding 80 million passengers for the first time in the airport's 50-year history.
Future DFW Airport has embarked on a series of expansion projects expected to continue through 2028. The first phase involves construction of Terminal F, DFW's sixth terminal, originally approved in 2023 as a 15-gate concourse costing $1.63 billion, scheduled for completion between 2024 and 2026. Earlier plans had envisioned 24 gates at a cost of $3.5 billion. This initial design lacked
landside facilities, with passengers processed in an expansion of Terminal E and reaching Terminal F via Skylink. In May 2025, DFW and American Airlines announced an expanded $4 billion plan, increasing Terminal F to 31 gates with landside facilities, including ticketing, check-in, security screening, baggage claim, and a large parking structure with integrated drop-off and baggage areas. The design adds international-capable gates and connects directly to Terminal D via a walkway. American will occupy all 31 gates, with the first 15 gates opening in 2027 (as originally scheduled) and additional phases following. The expansion will allow DFW to reallocate gates in Terminals D and E to other airlines. This expansion was needed due to the substantial growth that DFW is facing today, being the third busiest airport in the world, and soon reaching over 100 million passengers by the end of the decade. The second phase includes long-delayed Terminal C renovations, new piers adding nine gates to Terminals A and C, and roadway upgrades. This $2.72 billion effort is expected to wrap up by 2028. ==Composition and facilities==