Encompassing 27 square miles, Dallas/Fort Worth International is one of the world�s largest and busiest airports, accommodating more than 150,000 passengers each day. The 1974 opening of �D/FW� was preceded by nearly half a century of an often acrimonious aviation rivalry between Dallas and Fort Worth that featured a colorful cast of business leaders, municipal officials, and airline executives. Through its first 40 years, D/FW grew from a regional hub into a global crossroads for passenger and air cargo service. Bold, imaginative leadership sustained the airport through the failure of its largest tenant airline, the effects of 9/11, an air traffic controllers� strike, and more than one fuel crisis. An extraordinary economic engine for North Texas, D/FW stands poised to become home to the world�s largest airline, validating the original planners� dream of a dynamic focal point for domestic and international commercial aviation.
Author Bruce A. Bleakley, a 20-year Air Force veteran with 5,000 hours of flight time, is the museum director of the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Dallas Love Field Airport. The images in this book, many previously unpublished, come largely from the Frontiers of Flight archives, the C.R. Smith American Airlines Museum, the History of Aviation Collection at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.