Dallas Aviation

Since Otto Brodie’s airplane flight at Fair Park in 1910, the city of Dallas has seen over 100 years of rich and diverse aviation activity. Many of those years were spent on a long and complex road to a consolidated airport for the Dallas–Fort Worth area, an impasse finally resolved with the dedication of Dallas–Fort Worth Regional Airport in 1974. Central to Dallas aviation history is Love Field, established as a military base in 1917. A waypoint for famous flights such as the first round-the-world flight in 1924, a venue for colorful characters like barnstormer and bootlegger “Slats” Rodgers, and the site of World War II’s largest Air Transport Command base—Love Field was all this and more. Although no longer the region’s primary commercial airfield, Love Field remains a major aviation facility as the home of Southwest Airlines and several internationally recognized business aircraft operations.