The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

October 16, 2014 the Wright amendment comes to an end and while that's great news for Southwest and the city of Dallas, what impact will this have on Oklahoma?  Will Southwest discontinue flights out of Tulsa and OKC since they no longer have to stop in one of the Texas contiguous states before landing in Dallas?  If so, are the powers at be working on a plan to mitigate this impact? We lost our direct flight to Kansas City most likely due to an amendment to a transportation spending bill back in 2005 that exempted Missouri from this amendment.  

Perhaps our leaders need to be focusing on this instead of monuments at the state capitol and dictating who can get married.  

I think the OKC-DAL and TUL-DAL routes sell enough tickets to passengers living in OKC and TUL there’s no real need for worry.  Love Field is more convenient for people going to downtown Dallas as well.

I suspect if TUL-MKC were a profitable route, Southwest would have kept it. 

If we lost some SWA flights in the near term it might allow new carriers to come into Tulsa bringing new cities and more competition and hopefully lower prices. The vice grip that American and Southwest have on the Tulsa market is bad.

There will clearly be some negative impact on OKC and Tulsa flights.  And the fact that Southwest will certainly be adding nonstop destinations from Love Field means they will have to move planes from other routes to do so (unless they have a bunch of new planes coming in just in time).  So it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect there might be some reduction in the number of flights to markets such as OKC and TUL.

What would you want the powers at [sic] be to do to mitigate this impact?   

Put in high speed rail direct from Tulsa to Dallas.  ;D

Or at least upgrade US 75 to interstate standards bypassing towns like Okmulgee and Atoka.

That would be super.