Dallas Fort Worth:
Where Aviation Went Big
Few metro areas on earth have shaped commercial aviation more profoundly than Dallas and Fort Worth. From the moment the U.S. Army carved out a training field in the North Texas prairie in 1917, the region has been at the center of how America — and the world — takes to the sky.
"During WWII, two companies in Dallas and Fort Worth alone employed 70,000 men and women who built 50,000 aircraft — and that was just the beginning."
It started with Love Field, named for 1st Lt. Moss Lee Love, a cavalry officer killed in an early Army biplane crash in 1913. The Army opened the Dallas training field in October 1917, and it never really closed. Today, Love Field is the birthplace and home base of Southwest Airlines, which launched a revolution in low-cost air travel from its runways and holds a 95% market share at the airport to this day.
Fort Worth's aviation roots run just as deep. Meacham Field — established in 1914 — hosted the first scheduled airline flight in Texas in 1928, and two Fort Worth pilots set a world flight endurance record there in 1929, staying airborne for over seven days. Meanwhile, across town, American Airlines made Fort Worth its headquarters in 1979 and built the world's largest airline hub at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, which opened in January 1974 and received the first-ever U.S. landing of a supersonic Concorde that same year.
The DFW region is also home to one of aviation's most remarkable human stories. Bessie Coleman — born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892 — became the first African American and first Native American woman to earn a pilot's license. Denied entry to every U.S. flight school, she traveled to France, earned her international license, and returned to America as "Queen Bess," thrilling crowds at air shows and refusing to perform anywhere that barred Black spectators. Her legacy lives on at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, which features a dedicated exhibit and her Curtiss Jenny aircraft.
The military and manufacturing story is equally towering. Lockheed Martin's sprawling Fort Worth plant — Air Force Plant 4 — has produced the F-16 Fighting Falcon and now builds the F-35 Lightning II, the most advanced fighter aircraft ever made. Bell Helicopter has called Fort Worth home for decades, developing rotorcraft that changed military and civilian aviation. For pilots and plane lovers in the Metroplex, the sky isn't the limit. It's just the beginning.
