Love Field began preparing for the World Cup two years ago when it became official that Dallas would host several matches.
Christine Vo/Staff Photographer
The World Cup arrives in North Texas next month and the region’s two major airports are finishing preparations before welcoming millions of diehard soccer fans expected to flood into the region.
AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, will play host to a tournament-high nine matches. The first match is scheduled for June.
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DFW International Airport, the central hub of Fort Worth-based American Airlines and Dallas Love Field, anchored by Southwest Airlines, are already two of the busiest travel hubs in the U.S.
This month, airlines will offer more than 4.5 million available seats at DFW Airport, making it the fourth-busiest in the world, according to OAG data. Airlines will offer nearly 2 million seats at Love Field this month, making it one of the busiest medium-hub airports in the country despite its gate cap.
We asked officials at both airports how they’re preparing for the big event. Here is what they told us.
Love Field
Dallas’ hometown airport began preparations two years ago when the city officially knew the big event would be coming to North Texas, said Patrick Carreno, Dallas’ director of aviation.
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Carreno is in a unique position, having to oversee commercial and private traffic at Love Field, while also overseeing private traffic at Dallas Executive Airport, which is located about 6 miles southwest of Downtown Dallas.
Love Field is a beast on its own, the airport being the headquarters of Southwest. Carreno said the airport has been working with TSA and Southwest to “expedite the lines we know will come.” He emphasized that individual teams across operations, customer experience and communications have been coordinating with the airline in advance of the tournament.
“It’s their hometown airport, right,” Carreno said. “Their executives fly through the airport. They notice things, they point things out. … I think it just helps the situation. Because everybody’s kind of tuned into what’s going to happen here.”
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He added that his team has gone through what he said are “tabletop exercises.”
“Live testing, you know, from customs border protection, different types of scenarios that we’re going to see.”
“We obviously expect a lot of the international traffic is actually coming into DFW [airport], but there’s a lot of movements back and forth from the cities. We expect quite a bit of private activity at Love Field and Dallas Executive [Airport].” Love Field also expects to see team charter flights pass through the airport, Carreno said.
Even though the remnants of the Wright Amendment prevent commercial airlines from flying internationally at Love Field, Carreno said he expects “a lot of private international traffic to come through here.”
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Carreno said his team has been working with FIFA, the governing body overseeing the World Cup, to set up amenities such as multilingual services, a dedicated transportation curb, and special branding inside the terminal. The airport is also prepared to station staff members throughout the terminals to assist people in need of it.
He adds that he’s working with fixed-base operators to prepare for the influx of private traffic at Love Field and Dallas Executive Airport.
For non-FIFA travelers passing through Love Field, Carreno said, “I would just expect it to be busy. I think the airport is going to be … no different than the area, right? It’s going to be … a lot of traffic.”
DFW Airport
The World Cup will arrive amid ongoing construction for DFW Airport’s biggest transformation project in its history: a $12 billion capital improvement program that will bring the brand new Terminal F, which will include new aircraft gates.
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Renovations to the airport’s rental car facility and two new lounge experiences, The Chase Sapphire Lounge and PS DFW, will also be completed and operational by the time the World Cup begins. Right-hand exits along International Parkway for Terminals A, B and C will also be completed before the matches.
In terms of traffic, Sharon McCloskey, the vice president of customer experience for DFW Airport, told The News that the airport is seeing trends that indicate there will be fewer connecting passengers, but visitor traffic will be up 13%.
For context, in 2025 the average daily passengers at the airport for the same time period as the World Cup was 264,000 people per day, according to McCloskey. “Then 2026, we’re looking at 270,000 people a day,” she said. Overall, summer traffic is projected to increase by 2.3%, she said.
“As far as passenger flows in the terminals, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at everywhere there could be a queue. So that would be ticket counters, checkpoints, and we have a small group of industrial engineers that have been working on ‘how can we improve queuing so that throughput is better?’ ”
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DFW Airport is adding two lanes to its Terminal D center security checkpoint, which it plans to open “maybe in a couple of weeks,” according to McCloskey. She emphasized that the airport will also have customer experience specialists, who, combined with ambassador volunteers, speak 38 different languages.
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“I also hope that they see that we’re there to process them through efficiently,” she said. “They’re coming here to go to the matches. And so we want them to get there quickly. Because we’re centrally located and we have a lot of air service all across North America, there are going to be people who are going to come here … then take advantage of our air service and follow their teams around.”
Yet even with the influx of international travelers, McCloskey is still focused on providing a quality experience for those passing through for travel not related to the World Cup.
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“Because again, I lead the customer experience team. We’re very concerned with the existing traffic as well. So it’s not about creating special situations for FIFA fans to the detriment of our local [travelers]. Those are people we also care about. So what we’re doing is we’re looking to make things better for everyone.”