The airline currently offers five daily flights from the much coveted airport due to its proximity to central Dallas to its Atlanta hub at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, but has run into a bitter battle with the facility’s largest tenant, low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines, over gate access.
This latest growth sees Virgin America adapt its business model a little from Dallas as alongside its traditional point-to-point offering it promoting the new route as offering convenient connecting service via Love Field to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and New York's LaGuardia Airport.
The new flights will be made possible through a long-term sub-lease agreement that will transfer usage of two gates in the newly rebuilt 20-gate facility from United Airlines to Southwest Airlines. The transaction was reviewed and cleared without conditions by the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division, while the City of Dallas, the owner and operator of Love Field, also has approved the sub-lease.
AirTran Airways, initially formed as ValuJet in 1993, will operate its last scheduled flight on December 28, 2014 with AirTran Flight 001 (marketed as Southwest ‘WN5001’) operating between Atlanta and Tampa Bay that evening, the same flight number and routing of ValuJet's inaugural flight on October 26, 1993.
Under its revised Dallas schedule, Virgin America will move its existing links to Dallas/Fort Worth International from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the downtown airport from October 13, 2014 and will add multiple daily links with Chicago, New York, Washington DC.
