For years, the ‘worst airport gate in America’ was generally considered to be 35X at Washington’s Reagan National airport. There were competitors, like Miami’s D60 and the old D9 at LaGuardia before the terminal was redone. But 35X was the stuff of legend.

The gate is gone. The airport’s “Project Journey” included a new 14-gate regional concourse instead. They built an entire new concourse to replace one miserable gate. Gate 35X was a bus gate that served 14 remote stands for 50 seat regional jets. The new concourse, in contrast, supports 14 large regional jets.

There was signage for 35X, and that remains for posterity.

For those who remember — spotted in an undisclosed location. ⁦@MWAAHQ⁩ ⁦@Reagan_Airport⁩ pic.twitter.com/ATfI38mizD

— lori aratani (@loriara) December 19, 2024

Another old gate 35X sign, which then-American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said at the time of its teardown represented something that “looks like a gate but says ‘go down these steps and get on a bus and we’ll drive you out to an airplane’” reportedly sits in American’s government affairs office.

Nate Gatten, American’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, reported at the time that “someone on [his] team was supposed to drive over and pick it up.” It was being held in the Piedmont Airlines office at the airport but was later collected. He joked that it would eventually “go to the C.R. Smith Museum” in Dallas.

Parker said that he “heard about [the gate] a lot” in the form of complaints from Congressmen who live in small communities and were stuck using that gate all the time.

Gate 35X was originally gate 35A, the US Airways express gates, back in 1997. It actually remained 35A up until US Airways management took over American. It was renamed in 2014.

The airport was going to get rid of it 25 years earlier, building a new 9-gate regional jet concourse at a cost of just $16 million – instead of 14 gates for a billion dollars – but US Airways killed the idea.

You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, so the best we can say about American’s Gate 35X is that it brought together the likes of Robert Mueller and Donald Trump, Jr. and no matter how powerful the politician they were all brought back down to earth by 35X.