History Lesson 
Airport!
The new Dallas-Fort Worth Airport—World's Largest!—opened this fall amid pomp and circumstances appropriate to the Great Pyramid. And only Dallas-Fort Worth could have brought it off.
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THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES AT the airport opening is Julian Read of the public relations firm of Read-Poland. Julian is a former reporter for The Fort Worth Press and has worked with Governor Connally in his campaigns (which helps a lot, perhaps even helped get the airport's $60,000 publicity account). Julian has lived this airport for a long time, and is prone in unguarded moments to lapse into a visionary, Saint-John-the-Baptist trance, when he sort of glows. Whenever he is around Tom Sullivan, the airport executive director, and Erik Jonsson, the board chairman, there is a shared, glowing energy, a beatific assurance that they are on the wave of the future and that scoffers and other persecutors will get their comeuppance when they're stacked up at JFK or routed out of O'Hare into Duluth.
The airport opening is the public relations job of a lifetime: the largest collection of journalists for a single event in Texas history (except perhaps for the Riggs-King tennis match, which is going on simultaneously at the Astrodome—trust Houston to come up with something). It is very clear that Julian is not going to let anything spoil this opening—not unmerciful hassles, not small setbacks, not transitory embarrassments, not major foul-ups. Julian is positive. He's the first person we see in the mornings and he's still there late at night, running at the same high speed when we creep away, exhausted. Julian has the summer camp director's personal touch with everyone: no matter how great or insignificant their status, Julian answers their questions and solves their problems.
After the arrival of the Concorde, Julian introduces Tom Sullivan to the assembled press. Sullivan is known as Mr. Airport. The builder of Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK, he was brought to Dallas in 1968 when progress was stalled and things were turning sour. Sullivan threw out the existing plans—about a million dollars' worth—and started over. Twice it appeared the airport would not be built and that Sullivan would have to dismiss his staff. Twice Sullivan, along with some banking help, kept it going.
"This airport will make Dallas-Fort Worth the next Chicago," Sullivan says, that glow coming into his face. "I hope I'll live long enough to see it. Why, we'll have rocket airplanes that'll take off, go to 100,000 feet, fire a booster rocket and be in Japan in two hours or so. Of course, there isn't anyplace for them to land there now, so they'd have to come back here to set down. But we can do it.
ON THE RUNWAY BENEATH US a stage coach with six horses and two waving girls in gingham appears, circles the Concorde, and departs as mysteriously as it appeared.
"What we've done here," Sullivan continues, uninterrupted, "is to return to what airports were originally supposed to be. You drove up in your car, got out, and walked into the plane. Each gate here has its own parking lot. The distance from the door of the terminal to the plane will only be about 120 feet, or about half the distance from the door of a 747 to the rear. At other airports with gates stretching out on long fingers from one central terminal, you sometimes have to walk up to a mile. Then, when you get off the plane, we've got computerized baggage handling that'll get you your bag in three minutes."
ONLY A HANDFUL OF THE 300 reporters ask Sullivan any tough questions at all. What about the delay in opening the airport? What about the $60,000 budget for public relations? Is the airport big enough, since Montreal is allowing five times as much space? Sullivan hedges around about the delay, saying something about the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday crunch being a bad time to make the change from Love Field; starts to answer the question about PR cost but only mentions how many invitations to the opening were sent out (that cost $60,000?); then wanders on to say that Montreal set aside that extra land for industrial development (not exactly true: Montreal claims the land is for noise abatement and to prevent land speculation). Sullivan gets a round of applause and a portrait of himself presented by Julian Read.
AFTER THE PRESS CONFERENCE I take my first ride on AIRTRANS, the ground transportation system. Julian Read is in the same car, chatting amiably with some Fort Worth Star Telegram reporters as we're being swept along the narrow lanes that parallel the main airport spinal road. A TV reporter suddenly shoves a microphone in Julian's face and motions for him to talk. Julian doesn't even miss a beat, but alters his voice and manner to become AIRPORT GUIDE. The cameras roll.
"We're traveling now in AIRTRANS, the most advanced people mover in the world. It runs on 13 miles of track and connects every terminal in the airport within ten minutes. It's all electronically controlled. We needed this system because of the design of the airport. If you have to change flights, for example, AIRTRANS takes you to the next terminal. It also has special trash compartments to carry the airport's trash out for disposal.
"To our right you can see the first stage of a complete landscape plan involving 10,000 trees and one-and-one-half million shrubs and plants. It's the largest landscape project in the world. When it's complete this bald prairie will look like a park. Of course, it won't look entirely like a park (smile) because there's over 3 million surface yards of concrete here, which, as you can see, is a tan color that blends in with the countryside. We developed a special environmental cement just for the airport, so that it wouldn't look all hard and white but would be soft and inviting."
And Julian goes on and on, the airport spiel pouring out of him. It is a very impressive performance. The TV man removes his microphone and Julian lapses immediately back into casual chatting. When we arrive at the next terminal, he's off again, walking fast, collecting lost reporters, answering questions.
Despite Julian's good work, the important issues about the airport never get raised. Under the environmental provision of the Airport and Airways Development Act of 1970, for a new airport to obtain federal funds it must "provide for the protection and enhancement of the natural resources and the quality of the environment of the nation." Plans for new airports or even extensions of existing runways must fit both this general test and must also be compatible with urban planning. New airports are neeqed most desperately in the rapidly expanding urban corridors. Unfortunately, that is precisely where airports would not coincide with rational urban planning or protect and enhance the environment. When asked where Boston could build a new airport and be in compliance, a Massachusetts transportation executive unhesitatingly replied "Wyoming."
The booming business in air traffic is therefore largely consigned to existing facilities, which will be sorely strained to handle the projected doubling of passengers from 183 million this fiscal year to 372 million in 1980. These existing airports, moreover, are coming under increasing criticism and attack. Los Angeles International has already been successfully sued for $650,000 by 250 home owners who saw their property decline in value because of aircraft noise. L.A. International could potentially be forced to pay $10 billion in such suits. Consequently, the L.A. city attorney has urged that the airport be shut down. By buying up surrounding land, to the tune of $300 million so far, L.A. International has tried, unsuccessfully, to create a noise buffer zone. Chicago's O'Hare can't afford even to do that, since land around it goes for $7 a square foot. Washington National has established a curfew: no planes in or out between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. As Sullivan says, "We were lucky; we started before the ecology movement."
DFW appears on paper to have the noise problem solved. Its planners built it to accommodate the loudest existing planes. That's why it covers 18,000 acres, big enough to take in a working 2500-acre farm and two historic cemeteries. It can also accept larger planes to avoid an increase in frequencies of flights. The runways at DFW are extra-thick and can be thickened to handle a two-million-pound plane (a 747 weighs 800,000 pounds). The short-run, smaller planes make the most noise, however, and much of DFW's traffic will be short run. There will be nothing, however, like the truly terrifying sound of a 707 coming over houses in Oak Lawn on its final approach to Love Field.
The major thorn in the side of the new airport is not noise; it's an audacious crew called Southwest Airlines, a strictly Texas operation which did not sign the agreement to move to DFW and which plans to keep its high-density, high-frequency Houston and San Antonio commuter flights right at convenient little old Love Field. Through the logic of competition, if Southwest succeeds in staying at Love, then Braniff and Texas International must bring their commuter flights back there as well. Southwest has won one court test already, and is prepared to fight on if necessary.
If the bulk of the Texas commuter flights stay at Love, then DFW will be in trouble. Such a development could be the first step in transforming the triumphant eighth wonder of the world into a neglected albatross, much like Washington's beautiful, remote Dulles Airport, which cannot compete with convenient Washington National. "People are going to look for the one flight into the in-town airport," a close observer of the national airport scene told me. "And if they find it at Love Field, then DFW won't get the traffic. It's quite possible that the new airport will not become the center of the universe, after all."
The social event of the airport opening was the gala ball on Friday night, prior to the official opening ceremonies scheduled Saturday morning. Most of the guests at the afternoon's diplomatic reception along with 8000 Dallas socialites converged on the Continental-Delta terminal, which had been decorated in lush greenery with little touches suggesting the various countries to be served by the airport. Three separate buffets—Indian, Italian, and French—were prepared, along with 15 different stations for hors d'oeuvres typical of the particular country or region.
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