Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Airline Battles in Dallas

Besides American's latest worry at DFW and their loss of gates at Love,  there is a new battle taking place at Love Field and DFW. At Love Field, there are twenty gates. Southwest has control over 16 of them. Virgin American won the 2 gates up for grab as a result of the American Airline merger. Virgin, after its official win will give up its gates at DFW. American had been leasing those gates to Delta. United had the remaining 2 gates.

The City of Dallas just informed Delta that they had two weeks to vacate their gates. As everyone knows here in Dallas, the Wright Amendment that previously had held Southwest captive to where it could fly will expires on October 13. Virgin needs their gates. In fact, they have made full use of those gates with expanded service out of  Love Field and they haven't even begun to fly from Love until October 13. Delta just announced that they will sue the City of Dallas over those gates. Southwest is throwing a party to say good-bye to the Wright Amendment.

Meanwhile, over at the big airport. Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines is fearful of the Emirates Airbus 380 service. In fact, the Businessweek article head line read," Emirates Flies into America and U.S. Airlines Grow Anxious. While Tim Clark, Emirates Airline President is grabbing up all the available gates he can get at airports were American airports can already handle or are planning to expand to be able to handle the super-giant, A-380. Emirates sees a market in the States. They only have less than 10 percent of it currently.

Last Monday, September 29th, Qantas beat even Emirates with the arrival of yet another daily A-380 to DFW. So while Doug Parker was talking about his fear of Emirates, Qantas arrived with their A-380 daily service to Sydney. At any rate, there are now two A-380s arriving at DFW daily. It does appear that Parker is concerned about Emirates more, however, because they fly more A-380s than anyone and are buying more. Funny, Parker should be worried.  His airline doesn't even own  one A-380 and does not seem to have any plans to get one. American, with one of the oldest fleets  of all the airlines started to upgrade. There was also a rebranding of American with a new livery that still leaves customers unhappy with the new look. While still in bankruptcy, American began to replace their MD-80s with 737s, 777, and other like craft.Now that they are out of the courts, Doug seems to be worried about Emirates.

So while Gary Kelly is happy as the number one airline at Love and everyone loves the new paint on Southwest, it's his counter part, Doug Parker who controls more gates at DFW that seems to be unhappy. So unhappy, it seems, that one of his planes at DFW was recently see going head to head with the Emirates A-380 on the taxiway at DFW. Appearance IS everything, Doug.

Even Sir Richard Branson is happy. He is about ready to take off into space. Virgin American and Southwest  can fly your passengers to New Mexico to the Virgin Galactic space port.  Hang in there Doug, somehow you will figure out how to get your own A-380. Perhaps you can spearhead a renaming of your partner airline, One World, to something that's not so limited.
Qantas' A-380. Check out the kangaroo with the cowboy hat on!




American Airlines 777 and the new Emirates double deck A-380 on the taxiways at DFW

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