The new year arrived and shortly after Southwest Airlines began service to Denver, two of DFW Airport's international carriers -- AeroMexico and Mexicana -- announced they would be exiting the DFW market all together.

This put a further strain on merchants in the International Terminal D and the DFW Board considerd giving free rent to some concessionaires while officials worked to bring more potential customers to the area.

DFW also asked AA to relocate some of its flights from the busier domestic Terminals A and C to International Terminal D to balance out the passenger traffic.

Despite cost-cutting efforts, DFW officials predicted a $39 million shortall in revenue due to cutbacks in scheduled service by ATA, AirTran and Northwest Airlines; American's shifting of some flights to Love Field; AA's later than expected move into the new International Terminal D; and higher energy costs for the airport.

Unless DFW could raise landing fees, which would require airline approval, or come up with another source of revenue, AA and other carriers would have to kick in more money to cover DFW's expenses.

Over at their headquarters, American Airlines announced an agressive ad campaign for their new Love service - "Everything you expect from American. Now at Love Field." At the same time, it announced it planned to "redouble" its efforts to keep the Wright Amendment in place.

American admitted it expected to lose money on its Love flights, but would still provide the service out of fear of losing customers to Southwest.

American also suggested they wouldn't be upset if their arrival helped undermine the convenience of Love Field, Sounds like a flashback to the Braniff International days at DFW where American had the same mindset when it came to disrupting Braniff's operations even if it meant a short-term loss for American.

While DFW wasn't happy about the prospect of losing American Airlines flights to Love Field -- especialy since DFW's expensive terminal improvements were built primarily to benefit AA -- there was really very little they could do about it.

The Dallas Morning News published an article detailing the tensions that sometimes occured between DFW and American, as well as the challenges DFW faced going forward.

American's hub at DFW was described as being both a blessing and a curse -- the blessing being more nonstop flights to more cities on American because of the connecting traffic through DFW, making the area more attractive for business wishing to relocate and the curse being that AA's strength at DFW discouraged other airlines from competing at DFW in any meaningful way.

Interviews with officials from American and DFW Airport painted a picture of the relationship between the two.

Max Wells, who stepped down from the D/FW board last July after seven years, said the board has a duty to listen to American. "If you had a 100-floor office building and one guy had 85 floors and they wanted something, you'd pay attention," he said. But "our interests were not always what American's were."

The article ended by noting that Cincinatti International Airport --where Delta controlled 92% of the market (compared to AA's 85% share at DFW) -- experienced similar problems due to Delta's dominance there.