Up-close with Southwest Airlines’ Dallas cargo operations

DALLAS — After this week’s World Cargo Symposium in Dallas, the Cargo Facts team headed to Dallas Love Field (DAL) for our flight back to Seattle. However, our first stop — much to our driver’s confusion — took us not to departures, but to the Southwest Airlines Cargo office.

There, cargo customer service manager Tracy Asher demonstrated the carrier’s new point-of-sale system set to launch in nine days (as covered by our sister publication Air Cargo World back in February), which will allow Southwest to begin offering international cargo service to Mexico in May. We also got an on-the-ground look at Southwest’s cargo operations at DAL, where the carrier operates 180 flights per day from seventeen-and-a-half gates (the half comes from the 18th gate Southwest shares with Delta Airlines). During the tour, Southwest’s senior director of cargo and charters, Wally Devereaux, touted the airline’s extensive record of transporting perishables such as flowers and seafood, not to mention the live tropical fish we saw unloaded from one of the many 737-700 aircraft in Southwest’s fleet. We also spotted e-commerce and medical cargo awaiting loading en route to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), from which point it would continue its journey to its final destination through Southwest’s extensive domestic network.

As a treat this Friday, Cargo Facts invites you to join us in an up-close look at Southwest’s fast-moving Dallas operations, and wishes you a happy start to your weekend.