Around 4:30 p.m. this afternoon, a Washington Dulles airport mobile lounge transporting passengers toward Concourse D struck a dock at the terminal at an angle.
Passengers were able to disembark via stairs. However, there are conflciting reports on injuries. Some reports say that at least eight to a hospital non-life threatening issues, while one outlet reports that 18 people were hospitalized.
A Dulles International Airport “people mover” (Mobile Lounge is the official name) struck the dock at Concourse D as it was pulling up with passengers on board. Injuries unclear at this moment. @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/8jMpVKW5jm
— Joseph Olmo (@ReporterJoseph) November 10, 2025
#BREAKING @Dulles_Airport @MWAAFireRescue on scene D Gate stuck by mobile lounge. Several injuries pic.twitter.com/FkBZPFweZv
— Charlie Bragale (@charlienbc) November 10, 2025
Big response at Dulles after a mobile lounge struck the dock "at an angle." Passengers were escorted off via stairs and evaluated for injuries. It's not having an impact on flight operations. #FOX5DC pic.twitter.com/KkhwJGWSqr
— Jim Lokay (@Lokay) November 10, 2025
One of the unique features of Washington Dulles airport is that, despite building an expensive train system, they still use “mobile lounges” to ferry passengers across the airport from their D concourse and to bring passengers from some international flights directly to customs and immigration. These people movers were built in the 1960s.
These are no longer being built, since virtually no one else uses them any longer, and the manufacturer no longer supports them. Refurbishments cost about $8 million apiece.
Each one is named for a U.S. state. Each lounge needed a clear way to be called and tracked by operations and by passengers. Rather than numbering them (which could create confusion with gate numbers, concourses, or flights), the airport chose U.S. state names. That gave each vehicle a distinctive, easily remembered identity: “Board the Maryland” or “The Wyoming is headed to Gate 23.” It also reflected the airport’s status as a new national gateway for Washington, D.C. — symbolically connecting the states to the nation’s capital.
The fleet consists of 19 Mobile Lounges and 30 Plane Mates, and all remain in use today. There are 49 lounges but 50 states. None are named for Hawaii. I believe that Hawaii’s admission to the United States was known when these were ordered, but too late in the procurement cycle.
The only surprising part is that I don’t recall having heard this happened n before. As a DC resident, being loaded into the cattle cars upon landing after an international flight is an utter embarrassment as an American. They pack people in like a subway in Tokyo at rush hour before the driver slips between the human clusters to drive this stupid thing across the tarmac.
Can we not do better? The trains are certainly a step in the right direction in that they take you to the general vicinity of the terminal, leaving just enough distance to make you wonder why you’re not closer and why they’re blaring the PenFed jingle.
Yikes. Kinda been a bad year for aviation-related incidents, no?
Why have these not been replaced by buses already?
Major bummer, hope everyone’s okay. Must have been pretty bad, they don’t go very fast but I’d estimate 75+% of people aren’t holding onto anything during transit.
On a lighter note, that’s a nice picture Gary took from IAD TSA PreCheck airside, hopefully on the way to the Capital 1 Lounge a few feet down 🙂
@Peter,
America doesn’t do infrastructure, until it really has to. Just look at how long it took to redevelop LaGuardia Airport, replace Acela train sets, or fix roads, highways, etc…It is an agonizingly slow process as there is little political will or appetite for it.
@lavanderialarry — Ah, the NexGen Acela… five out of 28 planned trains in service as of late August 2025, aiming for full rollout by 2027… but, realistically, more like 2029, unless the cholesterol finally catches up to him, #47 will purposely prevent any nice things for all those blue states and cities, out of spite, even if it hurts the overall economy. Careless people.
What happened to the people movers that St Louis Lambert used to operate?
If only George Kennedy was still around to fix these “Mobile Lounges”, which made a brief appearance in the opening scenes of “The Concorde…Airport ’79” which was the final movie in the film series (the actual aircraft used in filming, “F-WTSC” was the only hull loss (2000) in the 20 unit production history of Concorde).
@ Gary — Most importantly, will the passengers receiver a voucher from United?
IAD is clearly the worst airport in the US and maybe the world. These antiquated buses are a joke. Poor planning did not extend the tram to Terminal D. I have flown in and out of Singapore Tokyo Hong Kong Seoul etc and always hate coming back to IAD, a Third World airport
I used to love riding the mobile loùnges when I was younger. You got unique views of the different planes at Dulles. I remember in ’79 we flew on an American Dc-10 to LAX. The mobile lounge took us right to the airplane.
Rob Burgess (HfP) says you’re lying if you don’t already know what’s going to be introduced from Hilton because you were briefed a while ago, and there’s currently a blogger meet in McLean. Care to comment?
@ George — Maybe it would fitting after all to name it after the worst POTUS in US history.
the reason I avoid that airport at all costs people movers
who ever came up with that should never have designed an airport
@George Santulli – IAD surely has its flaws, but it’s nowhere near the chaos of CDG, which stands as a global masterclass in how not to design or operate an airport.
@ dwondermeant – These mobile lounges have been operating perfectly safely at Dulles for more than than half a century. Since 1962 to be precise. They have transported several hundreds of millions of passengers without incident over that entire period until now (probably in excess of 500 million transports in total). It is very unfortunate that 18 people were injured here. But that puts the overall odds of injury at approximately 1 in 27.8 million over 62 years. Compare that to roughly 500 to 1,000 moving walkway injuries per year in U.S. airports, give or take, which amounts to around 1 in 2 million. I’d say whomever designed the mobile lounge system at IAD was a freaking genius and did a fantastic job, perhaps even to the point of deserving an award.
@Gene — Standard $20 digital voucher, I presume. Good for one bottle of Evian and some peanut M&M. They’re saved!
@ mike hunt. I love the mobile lounges and will defend their usefulness and excellent match to the architectural beauty that is IAD. But to be accurate, yes there have been a couple accidents over the years. Escalators, however are vile and dangerous and yet we keep them!
di@dwondermeant: “who ever came up with that should never have designed an airport”
The answer to that rather uninformed question would be the great architect Eero Saarinen. He also designed the TWA terminal at JFK, the Gateway Arch and many other impressive structures. Dulles was a marvel in it’s earlier years; a brilliant design. And the mobile lounges were one of the coolest ways to get to an aircraft. Sadly, the advent of airport security and the hub and spoke model rendered many of Dulles’ features to be obsolete. But the mobile lounges are still pretty cool and definitely preferable to the average Euro bus gate.
Yes America is a terrible place because of these people movers. Sheessh
I fly IAD at least once a month and love the people movers. It’s a great way to see airplanes and ramp operations up close and far more convenient than the jerky trains that are deep underground.
What do you expect when you create a government agency (MWAA) that is unelected, unaccountable to anyone and has the ability to tax and spend?
You get 62 year old mobile lounges, a multibillion dollar 2 mile train that doesn’t actually service a terminal and an $200 million bill to fix up the mobile lounges when stock bus would suffice. As an added benefit, the staff hires their kids to collect fat bonuses and benefits – all on the traveling public’s dime. Welcome to DC!
I was on one that broke down shortly after pulling away from a terminal gate on a hot summer day. Took over an hour to get everyone shifted to a replacement vehicle. Not my favorites.
Like most airports, your experience is very itinerary-specific. I really dislike C/D (except the Polaris lounge), which is all UA, and the train connection to it that they put under the still-to-be new construction. On the other hand, I like A/B, particularly the international lounges, the brightness and lack of crowding, and ability to walk to the main terminal. For incoming immigration, if you have GE, it’s great.
CDG, for all that people complain, is fine for connections. And T1 and T2 are totally different experiences. T1 is a Jetson’s design that has aged badly.
They aren’t as bad as the bus gates at Doha. Which isn’t saying much. IAD is one of my “home airports” and I hate those things. If more than a few international flights arrive at about the same time, you can wait an hour or more just to get on the people mover, all the time packed into a small boarding area while more people pour down the escalators.
BC asks “Can we not do better?”
No, apparently we cannot. But we can have Trump on a $1 coin with the “Fight! Fight! Fight!” insignia.
The original idea for IAD was to have a small terminal and mobile lounges to take you directly to your airplane, parked some distance away. The lounge jacked up to airplane height and you walked on from the lounge.
These mobile lounges travel faster than most airlines taxi (Southwest possibly being the exception). Yet passengers are not required to be seated, with their seatbelt fastened, and their carry-on luggage stowed. Obviously Trumps fault.