Delta Air Lines will get to keep flying out of Dallas Love Field for six more years as part of a settlement to end a seven-year-old legal fight over the limited number of gates at the North Texas airport.
Dallas City Council is set to approve the settlement deal Wednesday, which could be one of the final steps to resolve a long-running dispute over coveted spots at the airport that Dallas-based Southwest Airlines wants back from Delta. Dallas owns Love Field and has been in the precarious position of trying to resolve the inter-airline dispute.
Delta has been holding tightly to half a gate it shares with Southwest Airlines since 2014, when Southwest subleased the gate from United Airlines. Southwest lawyers have said Delta is squatting on the gate, where it flies five flights a day between Dallas and Atlanta. Meanwhile, Southwest fully controls 17 of the airport’s 20 gates.
Love Field isn’t allowed to grow because of complicated legal arrangements reaching back to the construction of DFW International Airport.
The resolution being voted on Wednesday said the settlement means “Delta Air Lines will have the right to fly on one gate at Dallas Love Field.” It appears that Delta will take one of the two gates controlled by Seattle-based Alaska Airlines since the resolution said the airport will pay Alaska $200,000 a year for the next six years under a lease agreement running through September 2028.
That was what the city proposed in 2019 to resolve the long-running dispute. Alaska was running about 13 departing flights a day out of Love Field at the time, but has only been operating two departing flights a day in 2022 to Seattle and San Francisco
Alaska also operates out of DFW International Airport and has been facing flight cuts amid a running dispute with pilots over a new contract. Alaska has two gates at Love Field that it controls after buying Virgin Airlines in 2016.
Delta,…
