D/FW Employees Gather Watch the 'Show'

Nov. 11, 2005
D/FW employees gathered Thursday morning to watch a live webcast of a Senate subcommittee's hearing on the Wright Amendment.

D/FW AIRPORT -- Like fans tuning in for a heavyweight boxing match, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport employees gathered Thursday morning in four areas of the airport to watch a live webcast of a Senate subcommittee's hearing on the Wright Amendment.

Clapping, cheering, laughing and groaning could all be heard from the second floor of the airport's administration building, where employees sat in the board and committee rooms and watched on several big screens.

Some of the loudest cheers came when Kevin Cox, the airport's chief operating officer, offered a virtual gut punch to the witness seated next to him, Herb Kelleher, the founder and chairman of Southwest Airlines.

"Give 'em hell, Kevin," one employee said when Cox described Kelleher's 1990 deposition in a California lawsuit in which Cox said Kelleher appeared to support the Wright Amendment.

It was an opposite stance from his current position, which calls for a repeal of the 26-year-old law. D/FW and American Airlines want to keep the law.

Cox quoted Kelleher's deposition, saying: "We, too, have to agree as a matter of logic and principle that if you allowed Love Field to come up to a full-fledged hub in opposition to D/FW Airport that indeed air service to the Metroplex would suffer to some extent, because basically a hub-and-spoke system depends for its success upon attracting passengers from a multitude of spokes that will fill up an airplane going to another destination."

He turned and looked at Kelleher and asked, "Sound familiar?"

The loudest groans came several minutes later when Kelleher asked for a chance to respond.

"I have the original copy of the ..." Kelleher said.

And suddenly the feed cut out for about five minutes.

"All of the webcasts from all of the committees were all having problems," said Aaron Saunders, a spokesman for the Commerce Committee.

D/FW technicians worked to fix the problem but soon discovered that the problem wasn't on their end. Airport employees, some of whom wore pro-Wright T-shirts and ate a free breakfast, walked back and forth between the board and committee rooms, hunting for an Internet feed that worked. At times they both cut out simultaneously.

Interest is high because some D/FW employees, like Jack Dale of Fort Worth, are worried that their jobs would be threatened by a repeal. American has said it would shift flights from D/FW to Dallas Love Field if the law goes away.

"I'm really concerned about the loss of flights," said Dale, a contract administrator.

Fort Worth Star Telegram

Knight Ridder content Copyright 2005 provided via The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.