Head-Shaking Fact Of The Day
I was reading this weeks edition of The Middle Seat in The Wall Street Journal written by Scott McCartney, and came across one of those facts that was surprising and made sense at the same time. For those travel enthusiasts that don’t read it, Scott’s weekly article comes out every Thursday and is a must-read for me.
In this article about how firefighters train to put out fires effectively on airplanes, Scott dropped this little nugget in the article:
Firefighting tactics and training have advanced, too. At the southwest corner of DFW’s immense property, which is larger than the island of Manhattan, the airport just completed a $29 million expansion of its training facility.
I’ve been to DFW airport roughly 200 times. It’s a big place. And, while it seems logical it’s bigger than Manhattan (though slightly less population) that fact left me shaking my head just a bit.
DFW is just over 10 miles long and a bit more than a mile wide. I used it as reference to explain size of Manhattan, NY (i.e. which will fit quite nicely “within” the boundries of DFW). My presentations described the lower half of NY City (i.e. from 59th st. to Battery Park) as the area that generates
over 20% of ATT revenue. It often helped move my collegues from Stockholm when I needed a software modification.
When I was a tour guide at Disney World in Florida, we consistently pointed out that it was twice the size of the Manhattan, and about the same size as San Francisco. I came to accept that….but an airport? Wow.
Tbcannold, never thought about it, but the Disney World comment makes sense. 🙂