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Dallas - Love
Field (DAL)
Dallas, Texas
Click map to go to Google Maps
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This page is going to cover
both of the major airports in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Love Field is the original Dallas airport, located about 16
miles east of DFW in the heart of Dallas. The only decent spot to do
any planespotting is the roof of the "A" garage. From this location 4
floors up you'll be facing runway 13R/31L which is the longest and most
often used runway. There may be some other locations on the north side around the lake but
I did not have a chance to check that out.
There isn't a lot of traffic or variety to spot
though. Love Field is
home to Southwest Airlines and so most traffic here is of the 737 variety.
There is a continuous flow of
737 traffic and the garage roof is in a good, close up location for watching
and taking pictures (in the morning due to the sun angle) but the down side
is the parking fee and lack of variety, so I'll give DAL 2 1/2 jets.
Interesting trivia: Love Field was named for Lt.
Moss Lee Love, an Army aviator who was killed in a crash in 1913. The
airport was originally an Army training base in World War I, officially
designated Love Field in 1917.
Click here to see photos from the parking garage roof
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| The Dallas - Fort Worth Airport is
such a massive place that it is almost a city in itself. There are
7 active runways and sometimes 4 or 5 are in use at a time! There
is only one official viewing area called Founders Plaza, located at Airfield Drive and Texan
Trail at the northwest corner of the airport. This is a new location (see map) and
will not be open until at least the middle of 2007. At its old location on the
southeast side of the airport, Founder's Plaza offered a
nice parking area, picnic tables, and a clean safe place to watch air traffic. The
same will be true for the new location - it is being moved to accomodate new taxiway
construction in the old area. From the new Founder's Plaza,
you'll most likely be able to have a nice view of traffic landing on 18R or departing to
the north on 36L as well as aircraft taxiing on the northernmost taxiway. Most of
the large aircraft use this runway. Some
people have reported success with photographing from the cargo parking
lot on the west side of the airport, but it might not be good depending
on the attitude of the cops on any given day.
The largest operator here is American and its
regional affiliate, but there are widebody jets from Europe not to
mention American's heavy jets. The variety of aircraft is nice and
so is Founders Plaza so this is why I'm only giving DFW a 3 out of 5.
A couple of other spots recommended by others are the rooftop sundeck of
the Harvey Hotel off of John Carpenter Freeway on the north side of the
field and some of the cargo building parking lots on the west side of
the field.
Click here to see photos from the old Founder's Plaza on the southeast side of the
field
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