‘Power of the DFW hub’: Why your next trip across the Pacific might be via Texas

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is America’s second busiest airport and one of its largest hubs. Travelers today can get from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Fiji with one quick stop at DFW; a route that 20 years ago would have taken three or more flights to complete.

Nadi International Airport (NAN) is one of DFW’s newest nonstop destinations. Fiji Airways began thrice-weekly flights Dec. 10, the latest in a surge of new Asia-Pacific routes from the megahub.

And while there are certainly plenty of North Texans eager to enjoy the beaches of Fiji, the new service is about a lot more than just Dallas and Fort Worth.

“This new route significantly enhances Fiji Airways’ connectivity in North America,” said Andre Viljoen, CEO and managing director of the airline, in a statement.

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Fiji Airways, which recently joined the Oneworld Alliance that includes DFW’s hometown carrier American Airlines, benefits from connections to American’s expansive network of routes from the airport. This includes at least 17 routes from Dallas, including to Boston, Miami and New York, that Fiji Airways is selling with its own “FJ” code — known as a codeshare — according to schedule data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Since 2019, DFW has added four new nonstop routes to the Asia-Pacific region — Auckland Airport (AKL) in New Zealand; Brisbane Airport (BNE) and Melbourne Airport (MEL) in Australia; and NAN in Fiji  — while also seeing Tokyo flights shift to the more convenient Haneda Airport (HND) from Narita International Airport (NRT), Cirium data shows. And in 2025, Cathay Pacific will add flights to Hong Kong International Airport (HGK) — American flew the DFW-HGK route until 2019 but exited the market during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic — and EVA Airways flights to Taipei’s Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE).

“It’s the power of the DFW hub,” Brian Znotins, senior vice president of network planning at American, said in an interview. American has added new flights to Auckland and Brisbane in addition to shifting its Narita nonstop to Haneda, while most of the other additions are on Oneworld partners.

The hub is “great for our partners in Oneworld who are looking to feed the entire U.S., Latin America and Canada — depending on which direction they’re going, there are many different efficient routings you can offer over DFW,” Znotins added.

Qantas, a longtime American partner, will add a fourth weekly DFW-MEL flight in February 2025 and more than double capacity on its DFW-Sydney Airport (SYD) route when it swaps a 236-seat Boeing 787-9 for a 485-seat Airbus A380 next August.

“Post-Covid, we continue to see great demand from both the local market and customers connecting through DFW on our partner American Airlines, and this underpins our decision to increase flying out of DFW,” Cam Wallace, CEO of Qantas International, said in an email.

Qantas flyers can connect to more than 200 destinations on American via DFW, Wallace added.

Underpinning the connectivity of American’s hub at DFW is the sheer size of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. The region is the fourth largest in the U.S., with an estimated 8.1 million residents in 2023, according to U.S. Census data. It is home to dozens of big corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Texas Instruments and Toyota USA.

EVA, which will launch five weekly flights to DFW from TPE in November 2025, cited that corporate presence among reasons for adding the metroplex to its list of U.S. destinations.

“With frequent business activities and convenient connections to Central and South America, the new route is expected to fulfill high passenger and cargo demands,” the Taiwanese airline said in a statement.

EVA stands out among the new entrants to DFW as being neither a member of Oneworld — it’s in Star Alliance — nor a partner of American Airlines. Asked about the connectivity it envisions over DFW, the airline said in a statement that it is “open to exploring more interline partners to work with.”

DFW is betting the surge in new flights will continue. Its own estimates have passenger numbers surpassing 100 million annually in 2028; the airport handled nearly 87 million passengers during the year ending in September, DFW’s latest data shows. International passenger numbers are estimated to grow at a compound annual rate of over 3% between September 2024 and the end of 2028.

The airport broke ground on a new 15-gate Terminal F in November. The facility is scheduled to open in 2027.

Asked about what’s next for American routes to Asia from DFW, Znotins mentioned both Beijing — a city American served before COVID-19 — and Singapore as potential opportunities, but he emphasized that there are no plans to add flights to either currently.

“It’s about choosing the best route and not necessarily any profitable route,” he said.

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