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.