Addison Airport’s Real-Live SuperBowl

When the SuperBowl comes to town, there’s very little in the way of bad news that could possibly affect folks much … except one, perhaps … the weather. The week before last month’s big game saw Dallas residents inundated with snow and even worse, ice events for which the region is almost never quite ready. Many of the tens of thousands of visitors in town to watch Pittsburgh take on Green Bay actually left the north hoping to escape just what they found when they arrived in town. By Friday before the game, another five inches of snow delivered cancellation notices to nearly 1,000 airline flights into both Love and DFW.

Many business jets were also turned away at Love Field on Friday morning. Thanks to Addison Airport crews who worked almost all night Thursday, our airport’s runway was relatively clear of snow and ice as employees at the tower welcomed aircraft unable to land elsewhere.

(Addison welcomed visitors with team logos painted on opposite ends of the airport)

By lunch time Friday, Addison looked like a parking lot with business jets of all sizes and descriptions sitting everywhere. Of course, all three of the airport’s fixed base operators (FBOs), Million Air, Atlantic and Landmark were only too ready to help.

While the task of clearing the runways and taxiways is the airport’s responsibility, clearing the ramps and parking spots is left to the individual leaseholders like FBOs. Everyone pulled together during the chaos which meant dozens of transient aircraft almost never knew there was a problem anywhere along the line. All the FBOs used everyone – and everything – possible to clear the ramps for traffic.

Many of the cars that would have picked passengers up at Love simply jumped on the tollway and connected with their people at Addison. By game time Sunday, the airport and the Metroplex were beginning to return to normal. On Monday morning though, Addison faced a new challenge … how to safely funnel all the departures out of the airport and not overwhelm the Dallas area radar controllers, nor the people in our own tower which had remained open all night on Sunday to handle the additional load. By 9 AM, Addison began to look like Atlanta’s Hartsfield, or even Chicago O’Hare as one aircraft after another made its way south along the taxiway for takeoff. In all, Addison Tower worked dozens and dozens more aircraft than normal between the Monday before SuperBowl and the Monday just after.

So despite the horrendous weather, the weekend worked out pretty nice in the end … unless ofc ourse, you happened to be a Green Bay Packers fan.

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