Just a quick political rant. I’m not sure if you are aware but there is a Federal law called the Wright amendment(see Shelby act as well) that prevents Love Field in Dallas from having flights to any states that do not touch TX. In theory this helps the economy, in reality it makes us pay artificially inflated rates for airlines since competition is stifled (read as: AA is afraid of competing directly
with Southwest and other low-cost carriers).
For more info :
http://www.setlovefree.com/
http://www.fightwright.org/
For the opposing view :
http://www.keepdfwstrong.com/
My favorite quote concerning DFW airport’s “impartial” review of opening Love field up is :
“What we got was a 15 page PowerPoint presentation with no concrete examples or explanation of the modeling scenario that was used that rambled on about how Southwest would devastate the International Flights (ahem…. SWA is a domestic airline). Each scenario seemed to lead to a 31-square mile smoking crater between Irving and Hurst. It focuses on worst-case scenarios and regrettably does not have a “best case” scenario. When reading it, note one important thing: The word
AIRFARE does not appear in the report. Not even once. Since it was a report to study the economic effects of repealing the Wright Amendment, not mentioning airfare is truly a smoking gun result. It either means that SH&E is incompetent or DFW micromanaged that report from day one.”
The good news is that TX Rep Sam Johnson announced yesterday that he and TX Rep. Hensarling are going to work towards repealing this. If they are your reps then write and thank them and if they’re not poke your Rep with a stick, while you are at it you may want to poke the TX Senators with a stick to get them on the bandwagon as well. If your Rep is Rep. Joe Barton, find a bigger stick as Barton said he will “vigorously fight any effort to repeal that measure.”
As always you can reach your congressional peeps at :
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
Of course, since it is a Federal law, anyone in any state can get their Reps and Senators looking at this as well.