Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW)

DFW is American Airlines’ largest hub, so it’s been a layover on many of my trips. For a while, they were the only airport with American Airlines mainline service from my home airport of Dayton (DAY) (although AA did serve many of their other hubs via American Eagle regional subsidiaries) through about 2018, via their MD-80 fleet. With the MD-80s retired, all of AA’s Dayton service is now regional, but it’s still a frequent layover airport for me.

My first visit to DFW was a family trip to Texas over the 1996–1997 new year break. After that, though, I didn’t visit it again until I started traveling for work. My very first work trip in 2009 was to Arlington, Texas, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. I went to Arlington a lot from 2009–2011, generating a lot of trips with DFW as a destination.

From 2011–2013, I had business in Abilene, Texas. Although Abilene had its own airport (ABI), it was a small enough airport that it only had flights to and from DFW. Since it was only about a three hour drive from DFW to Abilene, I often just flew to DFW and drove to Abilene from there.

Likewise, from 2013-2020, I had to go to Altus, Oklahoma a lot. Altus didn’t have airline service, so one of the quickest ways to get to Altus was to take the direct flight to DFW and then drive about three and a half hours to Altus from there.

I don’t have much reason to go to the metroplex itself anymore, but I still have plenty of layovers thorough DFW.