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.

A Single-Flight Round Trip

In February 2013, I had a trip to Austin, with a layover at DFW in both directions. On my outbound flight from DFW to Austin, our pilot came onto the intercom and nonchalantly informed us that the plane on fire outside the right windows is nothing to be alarmed about.

He was absolutely correct; at DFW, they have a fire department aircraft trainer—what looks like an old aircraft, which can be set on fire so that the fire department can practice putting it out. I’ve seen these trainers at a number of airports, but I hadn’t yet seen one in use.

On the return trip, I boarded what I believed to be my final flight of the day at DFW, expecting to fly back to Dayton. Instead, about a half hour into the flight, the lights flickered; a few minutes later, the crew informed us that the aircraft had experienced a generator failure, and while they had a backup, we were going to return to DFW for safety. When we landed and deplaned, I could see from the concourse that a number of DFW fire trucks had followed us back to our gate.

I don’t know if the problem was worse than the crew let on, or if all the fire trucks were a precautionary measure, but at least I knew the fire crews were well trained.