Joe Lopano has been executive VP-marketing and terminal management for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport since 1997, where he is responsible for passenger and cargo network development, advertising and marketing programs, customer service and real estate as it relates to contractual negotiations with airline tenants. He came to DFW from Lufthansa, where he was the head of U.S. marketing. He also held management positions at Continental and Pan Am.

Aviation Daily: Give me a rundown of your big air service wins in 2007.

Joe Lopano: We had a pretty good year in 2007, despite it being rough because of airline capacity reductions and high fuel costs. We added Panama City, which is a very fast-growing travel market. We also added Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands. But we are really happy about addition of service to London Heathrow Airport on British Airways with two [Boeing] 777s a day. We also convinced KLM to fly an [Airbus] A330 to Amsterdam. On balance, it was a good year for DFW.

AD: You have American Airlines as your hub carrier. How do you balance the needs of your biggest customer with the need to bring in more domestic and international airlines?

JL: Eleven years ago, I got a call from DFW. I was working at Lufthansa at the time. They wanted me to be their director of air service development. I thought it was the third-biggest airport in the world and had American Airlines as a large hub carrier, so I wondered what I could do there. But we've been able to add low-cost carriers and add more foreign flag carriers, especially before 9/11. We've built DFW into the fastest-growing mid-continent cargo hub. On the cargo side, Cathay Pacific has eight flights a week and is very successful.

We have all major and relevant passenger airlines here except for Southwest, which is not allowed to come here, JetBlue and Virgin America, which we're working on. It's like having a bunch of children  every one of them is different and they all have different needs. As long as you can keep them all happy, you can have a pretty good operation. I think we understand American's needs. We built Terminal D on time and under budget. We were rated the No. 1 airport in the Americas by [Airports Council International] and were No. 1 rated by J.D. Power [and Associates].

AD: Some would ask why DFW even bothers with chasing new service since it has the luxury of American's very large presence in the region. How do you answer that?

JL: It's really simple. My paycheck comes from the people of Dallas and Fort Worth, and they own the airport. They have given us a mandate that they want to be connected to the world. They want good convenient schedules, they want competition and that's our charter, that's our mandate. We go out and do that. Although we are very happy with the level of service we have, we have goals and aspirations to get even farther, and I think that to envision anything less would be unfair to the people of Dallas and Fort Worth.

AD: What are some of the other destinations DFW would like to attract for the region?

JL: [Of] the key markets that are emerging right now, of course China is very important for us and we certainly can support service to China. India is again very high on our radar screen. We have service to Korea that's doing quite well. We have excellent service to Japan that is also doing quite well. We see opportunities in Hong Kong, we see other opportunities in Europe, we see some more opportunities in South America on the international front. On the domestic front, we'd like to see B6 VA in here. We'd like to see American Airlines expand both domestically and internationally. Of course, we talk to them all the time about the opportunities we see.

AD: Airlines are cutting back capacity, and the price of fuel keeps going up. How do you make your case to the airlines for more service?

JL: It certainly gets more difficult. One hundred dollars a barrel for oil is really putting a damper on a lot of people's expansion plans. However, there are a lot of airlines around the world who are getting deliveries of fuel-efficient aircraft, and they're looking to expand their presence in key markets around the world. The beauty of it is that Texas is the No. 1 exporting state in the entire country. The DFW region has 24 Fortune 500 companies. So even with worries about fuel and worries about the U.S. economy, the economies around the world are also our target. The U.S. economy softens a bit, but the Chinese economy is growing, India's economy is growing, the European economy is growing, and some of the economies of South America are having really good years. If you're going to plug into the United States, you probably want to plug into DFW. It's the fourth-largest population base, has 24 Fortune 500 companies and an excellent business environment.

Editor's note: Go to the Towers and Tarmacs blog to read more of the interview and listen to a podcast of Lopano.