DFW Airport opens its third end-around taxiway, letting more arriving jets skip runway crossings

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has finished building its Southwest End-Around Taxiway, the third route of its kind at the airport, DFW announced Tuesday, Oct. 27. The airport's announcement describes the project as finished ahead of schedule.

An end-around taxiway gives a landing plane a path around the far end of an active runway, so it does not have to stop and wait for a gap in traffic to cross.

The airport says removing those crossings saves airlines operating costs, shortens travel time for passengers and cuts taxi times by an average of four minutes per flight between the runway and the gates.

What went into it

According to DFW, the new taxiway includes:

• more than 600 LED light fixtures meant to help pilots and ground crews see where they are going
• 145,000 linear feet of electrical cable for lighting and safety systems
• nearly 97,000 square yards of concrete pavement

Part of a larger build-out

DFW opened its first end-around taxiway, on the southeast side of the airfield, in 2008. A second, the Northeast End-Around Taxiway, opened in May 2022, which the airport says made it the only U.S. airport with end-around taxiways at both ends of a runway. The Federal Aviation Administration has committed $180 million in grants to the airport's end-around taxiway program in total.

The new taxiway is one piece of DFW Forward, the airport's $12 billion capital plan, which also covers runways, roads, bridges and terminal upgrades. DFW says it is on pace to handle 100 million passengers a year by 2030.

The airport is owned by the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Sources

dfwairport.com