Southwest Airlines Exploring Dallas Training Facility Expansion

Southwest Airlines has filed plans with the city of Dallas, Texas to expand its flight training facilities near its headquarters complex at Dallas Love Field Airport.

The plans are for a 14+-acre tract of land in the same area the airline built an almost 500-thousand square-foot addition to its Dallas headquarters three years ago.

Southwest’s current flight training center is 110,000-square-foot facility that was built in 1977 to train the more than 2,600 pilots it employed at that time; Southwest now employs about 8,000 pilots. The airline says it is still in the process of evaluating an opportunity for a new building on its campus – and that if it moves forward with the building, it estimates a move-in date of no earlier than 2018.