Biography|Gary C. Kelly — He Scanned the First Unrestricted Passes at This Terminal

People treat Love Field as a local hop airport. For thirty-four years federal law had made it one.

The Wright Amendment's last domestic nonstop ban lifted at 12:01 a.m. on 13 October 2014. A countdown clock in the Southwest headquarters lobby hit zero.

Kelly, by then chairman and CEO, worked the inaugural nonstop to Denver that morning. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram put him at the gate at 6:40 a.m., scanning boarding passes and greeting passengers.

The Dallas Morning News timed Flight 1013's passage into Colorado later that morning and treated it as the first trip to use the new freedom. Southwest's own fiftieth-anniversary history says Flight 1013 left Dallas for Denver after the clock hit zero.

A banner on the headquarters building, visible from the runways, said goodbye to the amendment and hello to the rest of the country. Employees gathered on the campus roof and on the field.

Congress had signed the long sunset in 2006. The eight-year wait ended on this concourse, not at DFW.

Love Field still has a twenty-gate cap from the Five-Party Agreement that made the repeal possible. The first unrestricted boarding pass was scanned here anyway.

The terminal in this photograph is the rebuilt public hall passengers use now. The gates sit in a single walkable concourse on one level.

Photo: Danazar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons