Further Wright Talks Likely

After a month and a half of trying to get together for a second round of talks on the Wright Amendment, members of the two negotiating teams from Fort Worth and Dallas say they expect a meeting in the next 10 days.

Several deadlines for settling the decades of debate over the 1979 law are looming, but serious talks have been in a holding pattern.

The two cities' mayors have shuttled proposals back and forth between American Airlines, which is trying to protect its Dallas/Fort Worth Airport hub in the talks, and Southwest Airlines, which is trying to open its Dallas Love Field base to long flights.

The carriers haven't yielded in their positions, at least publicly, or faced each other in the same room to negotiate.

"One would get the impression that there's a tactic of delay, delay, delay," Ed Stewart, a Southwest spokesman, said Monday of American officials. "We came into this on the assumption that everyone involved would negotiate in good faith, and that has yet to come to pass."

But Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said that's not true. "We have been participating every step of the way, and any statement otherwise is a gross mischaracterization," he said.

"There really is no urgency to get this done. If there was a rush and a rash decision made without examining all of the consequences, that wouldn't serve anybody well."

The cities eagerly await results of an updated study on the master plan for Love before they delve deeply into crafting a solution to Wright, a federal law that allows nonstop flights from Love only to cities in Texas and several surrounding states.

Results of that study, paid for by Dallas and conducted by the same Tampa, Fla., aviation group that worked on the original 5-year-old master plan, were due by the end of the week. Whenever the seven negotiators from both cities reconvene, they'll have several issues to address from their last meeting in Arlington, on March 31. Those include whether to continue barring international flights from Love, people familiar with the talks say.

Also, the cities want to talk about limiting the total number of commercial flights from Love, said the meeting participants, who declined to be identified because of the talks' sensitivity. Love allows international flying only for corporate jets and small charter flights that are prearranged for security checks by customs officials, said Terry Mitchell, assistant director of aviation for Dallas. Scheduled commercial passenger flights can't fly internationally from Love.

But that's not to say they couldn't someday come to Love if Congress repeals Wright.

Southwest in recent weeks floated the idea that it might want to fly internationally.

"There's nothing precluding us from doing that, except for the fact that we don't have the necessary infrastructure to do it, nor has customs agreed to supply the personnel necessary to make it happen," Mitchell said.

Asked why she thought international flight limits were brought up at the meeting, Dallas Councilwoman Pauline Medrano said, "I think it's pretty obvious -- D/FW."

Costs for screening passengers for international flights in North Texas are consolidated at D/FW.

Medrano is one of three council members on the Dallas negotiating team, along with Miller.

The situation is similar to the one in Houston, where George Bush Intercontinental Airport receives all international commercial flights into the area, while the smaller Hobby Airport, across town, handles only domestic flights.

Southwest's Stewart said that his company is willing to talk about international-flight restrictions if Wright goes away but that it would first like to talk to American executives about it.

American considers international-flight restrictions at Love a moot point.

A large hub of connecting flights would have to be built at Love for an international operation to succeed, and American doesn't foresee building a large international operation at Love, Wagner said.

Another hot issue involves the number of gates versus the number of flights at Love.

The Love master plan limits the airport's growth to 32 gates. Currently, 19 are in use: 14 by Southwest, three by American and two by Continental Express.

American is sticking with its position that Love should be closed to commercial traffic, while Southwest wants Wright lifted immediately or over a specified period. If not a shutdown, American wants to see the number of gates significantly limited at Love.

That would force Southwest to close some of its gates and give up others to competitors, such as American, which might want to operate from Love if Wright is lifted. Southwest hasn't indicated that it's willing to give up any of its gates, including seven it doesn't have in use.

Fort Worth officials also want to talk about limiting the number of flights from Love -- not just the number of gates in operation.

That's to ensure that airlines can't bump up the number of flights to more than a typical gate can handle by, for example, using shuttle buses to deliver passengers from the gate to waiting airplanes, a person familiar with the talks said.

Ultimately those issues are among many points that will have to be resolved if the cities want to meet their self-imposed deadlines of June 14 for Dallas and Aug. 1 for Fort Worth to come up with a solution to the Wright dispute. Some in Congress have been pressing for a local resolution and have threatened to try to impose one.

Miller and Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief say they've spoken regularly with each other since the start of the year. And although they included a handful of council members from both cities in their closed-door meetings once, the mayors say they continue to talk one-on-one.

The mayors have even taken their face-to-face meetings on the road to the company headquarters of Fort Worth's American Airlines and Dallas' Southwest Airlines so they could talk with executives there. But the airlines have yet to get into the same room with each other.

American turned down an invitation two or three weeks ago to meet with both mayors and Southwest at the same time because the two airlines were so far apart on all issues, said a senior executive at American who asked not to be identified.

The executive said the mayors have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy, going back and forth with both airlines exploring areas of compromise.

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David Wethe, (817) 685-3803 [email protected]

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