Tuesday, August 2, 2005

Wright is Wrong

Did you know that if you fly Southwest from Dallas, you can only fly to other Texas cities served by SW or the states that border Texas? Dallas is the location of Southwest Airlines’ headquarters, yet you can only get to a handful of other places from there! All because of the Wright Amendment, which was set up when DFW Airport was opened to limit air traffic in and out of Love Field Airport, located a mere 15 minutes from downtown Dallas. This is a HUGE advantage for American Airlines, who pretty much has a monopoly set-up for flights to Dallas. Dallas is a MAJOR airline hub, with that single airport being one of the busiest in the country, up there with Chicago and Atlanta (NY and LA traffic are split between the different airports servicing those cities). Southwest will only ever operate out of Love Field, which American doesn’t even use anymore, so DFW and American are not threatened in any way. There are only good things that can come out of repealing the Wright Amendment. The main thing most of us care about is that fares will go down for flights to and from Dallas, as they do for all major cities that Southwest starts flying to, thus making things better for the consumer. Cheaper flights for everyone!

So, visit Set Love Free and see if your Senator and/or Congressman is supporting the bill (one for the House and one for the Senate) to repeal the Wright Amendment. If not, please write them a letter asking for their support! This is antiquated legislation and it's about time we got rid of it!

4 comments:

Eddie said...

Agreed!

Pigs said...

And it would let me not have to make 4 connections to go home on Southwest.

Editor in Chief said...

Exactly!!! That's what I'm talking about, no connections! I'll be you can't even book the flight with all connection options directly out of Dallas, Pigs. You have to fly to Houston, then book it. What a pain in the ass. I hate it!

Pigs said...

We're going Dallas to Austin to Nashville to Raleigh. Then home! Good times. But it's with free tickets, so what can you do?