DFW Finishes Its Third End-Around Taxiway Early — the Airport That Lets Planes Go Around the Runway Instead of Across It

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has completed its Southwest End-Around Taxiway ahead of schedule, the airport announced in material reported Monday — its third end-around taxiway, and another piece of the $12 billion DFW Forward capital programme. The idea is in the name: an end-around taxiway lets an arriving aircraft taxi around the end of an active runway instead of crossing it, which removes one of the airfield's standing conflicts — a plane on the ground in front of planes landing and taking off — from the system entirely.

DFW's claim on the design is singular: it is the only airport in the United States with end-around taxiways at both ends of a runway. The first was completed in 2008, the Northeast End-Around Taxiway followed in May 2022, and the Southwest now makes three. The new pavement is substantial — nearly 97,000 square yards of concrete, more than 600 LED light fixtures and 145,000 linear feet of electrical cable — and the Federal Aviation Administration has provided $180 million in grants behind the airport's end-around programme. The payoff is measured in minutes: the airport puts the average saving at four minutes of taxi time per flight, which compounds across a hub's day into airline operating costs and passenger connection times alike.

The taxiway lands inside the larger bet DFW Forward represents. The $12 billion programme is the airport's modernization arc for the decade, and the airport expects to handle 100 million passengers annually by 2030. Every minute shaved off a taxi, and every runway crossing removed from a controller's board, is capacity the airport does not have to build a new runway to find. On a week when the Metroplex's attention is on ballots and storm lines, its biggest machine quietly finished a piece of concrete early.