U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was at DFW on March 30 for the groundbreaking.
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) has broken ground on a new End Around Taxiway (EAT), to be funded in part by U.S. government infrastructure investment.
EATs enable aircraft to taxi around active runways rather than cross them. DFW built its first EAT in 2008 on the airport’s southeast side. The airport built another EAT on its northeast side in 2022. The latest EAT project, on the airport’s southwest side, is slated to be completed in 2025.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was at DFW on March 30 for the EAT groundbreaking, announcing the FAA will provide $28.8 million toward the project via the infrastructure legislation passed by the US Congress in November 2021. He noted aircraft crossing runways are a risk that can be eliminated with EATs.
In addition to increasing safety, EATs “improve operational efficiency, generate aircraft operating cost savings and reduce passenger travel times,” DFW says in a statement. “EATs also avoid aircraft stoppages, leading to a decrease in taxi times by an average of 4 min. per flight for passengers as their plane travels between the runway and the gate areas.”
According to DFW, the FAA provided $115 million in funding to build the northeast EAT completed in May 2022. “Safety is the number one priority across the aviation industry and here at DFW, and we greatly appreciate the federal support in continuing to invest in our infrastructure and modernization of the airfield,” DFW CEO Sean Donohue says.
DFW handled 73.4 million passengers in 2022, 97.7% of the 75.1 million passengers handled in 2019. The airport is expected to exceed 2019 passenger levels in 2023.
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