This Just Ain't Wright

And now, a bit of an aviation history lesson.

Then-House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Texas) tucked a little plum into the International Air Transportation Competition Act of 1979. The Wright Amendment prohibits airlines from using jets that hold more then 56 people from flying out of Dallas Love Field to anywhere outside Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico or Texas. The Shelby Amendment added Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi to that list in 1997.

It's a pretty unusual set of limits. National Airport in Washington (the only U.S. airport named after two presidents) and LaGuardia in New York have federal perimeter rules because of their limited size and proximity to major cities. But with these two exceptions, no airport other than Love Field has federal restrictions on the destinations it may serve.

What was the practical effect of this policy? The fledgling Southwest Airlines, which had chosen to keep its headquarters at Dallas Love instead of moving to the larger, newer Dallas-Fort Worth International like the other airlines, was barred from expanding its Dallas operations to reach most of the country. The stated rationale at the time was to protect the new airport from being eclipsed by its predecessor.

Twenty-five years after what Wright wrought, Southwest is far and away the dominant carrier at Love Field -- and is actively campaigning for the amendment's repeal.

A recent master plan by the airports authority caps the capacity of Love Field at 32 gates. By contrast, DFW is the world's third-busiest and serves 53 million passengers a year from a facility that will, by the end of this year, be home to 168 gates.

Seems like Love will never put DFW in too much danger with those numbers. So you'd expect the Wright Amendment to be obsolete, and there to be very little resistance to its repeal, right? Wrong.

See, the other major player in this debate is the real titan of the Dallas-Fort Worth airspace. American Airlines controls a whopping 82 percent of the air traffic at DFW. In practical terms, this means American has successfully bullied low-fare competition out of that market.

Try this on for size. Flying from Chicago to Dallas on a refundable ticket 21 days from now will set you back $708 for a nonstop. Flying from Chicago to Houston under the same specs will cost $586.

Both Dallas and Houston are large Texas cities that are each a hub for a major United States airline (American in Dallas, Continental in Houston). But Chicago to Houston is actually 240 miles farther away than to Dallas, and the route is served by Southwest. Got a sense now of what allowing Southwest to truly compete would do to American's fare structure in Dallas?

I have no plans to visit Dallas soon. But I do enjoy Southwest's no-nonsense, egalitarian approach to air travel and the fact that it's the only pre-deregulation airline to consistently make money. And I hope Congress sees the wisdom of repealing the fAArce that is the Wright Amendment before too long.