It's no secret that I have long admired the quirky and humorous billboard ads around Love Field. They go up and down Mockingbird Lane on either side of where Cedar Springs becomes Herb Kelleher Way at the main entrance to Love Field. I love humor and I cannot drive down Mockingbird without a chuckle, which I appreciate.
Last year during the holidays, the parking situation at Love was bad. The increased traffic coupled with the renovation and enlargement of the terminal didn't help much. Never-the-less, it became an immediate attention grabber that something had to be done. Quickly, Southwest started their LOVE lots and shuttled employees to the terminal from those lots. Then, they created long term lots at a much cheaper rate to give the parking garages a quicker turnover. In short, the problem was eased a bit quickly.
The aftermath was this: construct a new and larger additional garage. That's why you see the big tower cranes at Love now. In an effort to kinda keep tabs on the Southwest growth in physical plant, Southwest opened a new operations center across Denton Drive from their Corporate Headquarters. That building had not even seen a few paint chips and scratches before the groundbreaking of the new training facility north of the operations center. Well, it was just common sense that new equipment would need to be placed in that center because of the flight training simulators for pilots and a mock-up for flight attendants, too, but then, it became apparent from just general observation that something else was going on in that new, and not yet finished building. When the big holes in the HQ building and the operations center on the second level appeared, it was pretty much an architectural guess that walk ways or sky bridges were in the works because the Love Field Train Station is in between HQ building and the operations center. And when the expressway like support went up in between the operations and new flight training facility, that same guess that would be the support to span the sky walks. Suddenly, there appeared one on the east side of Denton Drive at the end of the corporate HQ building and that sealed the fate of the sky walks suspicion.
The parking garage for the flight training facility is unusual. the normal look of one of those is to see the uneven floors caused by the ramps going up the many levels. That wasn't there. It still needs to be investigated but I would think that either the ramps are in the middle or there is some automated lift. I saw a lot of those in Brasil (yes, in Brazil it is spelled with an s instead of a z). the facility has a back entrance from Harry Hines Blvd. in the medical research district as well as the main entry point off Denton Drive.
In the meanwhile, things have a way of revealing themselves to those of us that aren't impatient. In time, most questions are answered automatically, albeit but the fine details. Still, the over all picture is always the most important and in photography when you do a close up, most of the time, you will do a wide angle to show the relationship to the subject. That's still true with general observations when trying to figure things out. Which brings me to my point at the end of this flight. All that additional space in the new training facility might be for---get this--- SWA University. How did I come up with that? Simple and using Southwest own words: "Check out these training wheels" that I found parked in an out of the way place. I learned long ago to never fail to check out those kinds of paces for the real taste of business savvy. I'll keep you posted.
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| Yes, do check out these SWA University training wheels! |
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| What A ride! |
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| Here's that skywalk hub. Left to Operations. This way to HQ |
and right background is training facility as it is now getting its sky walk.
