Washington Dulles airport police were fired or resigned en masse in a scandal where they were taking bribes from limo and rideshare drivers for illegal access to passengers inside the terminal.
- The officers involved are with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police Department at Dulles International Airport.
- Criminal investigations have been referred to the Loudoun County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney.
- In addition to payoffs, soliciting rides inside terminal is both against airport rules and state law – activities that airport police are supposed to be stopping.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has given the generic line about expecting “the highest standards of professionalism and integrity” and “not tolerating” violations.
The D.C. Airports Authority Has A Long Record Of Weak Controls, Nepotism And Bad Contracting
In 2012, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General released a brutal audit of MWAA’s management, policies and practices. The chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee called MWAA a “poster child for corrupt practices.”
- Contracting and procurement
- MWAA improperly used non-competitive and limited-competition contracts, that should have been competitively bid under its federal obligations.
- They couldn’t justify avoiding full competition and negaged in thin oversight.
- Gifts, perks and cozy vendor relationships
- The inspector general found board members and executives accepting high-value gifts from contractors and potential contractors – sports tickets, golf, trips, entertainment.
- The overall culture made it far too easy for vendors to get access and inside information that could tilt competitions.
One lawmaker said MWAA officials had accepted gifts “that would make Jack Abramoff blush.”
- Nepotism and patronage
- The audit and subsequent hearings described an agency where relatives of board members and senior staff landed jobs despite anti-nepotism rules.
- A former board member stepped down and was almost immediately given a staff job at a salary higher than a Member of Congress, which even the airport authority’s CEO later admitted was “not good” judgment.
- Weak internal controls
- There were insufficient policies and lack of controls that undermined contract management and ethics enforcement across the organization. The airport authority promised reforms but the corrupt culture persisted.
D.C. Airports Sit Beside The Worst-Run In The Country
If you rank large U.S. airport authorities on a corruption-incompetence axis – based on documented scandals, audits, and criminal cases – you get a familiar rogues gallery.
Detroit – Wayne County Airport Authority (Detroit Metro)
Detroit is still the gold standard for how bad airport governance can get. Before the independent authority existed, Detroit Metro was run directly by Wayne County under County Executive Ed McNamara. A Detroit News investigation found that about went to a firm associated with a McNamara ally, instead of the low-cost bidder.
That’s why the state created the Wayne County Airport Authority in 2002. It didn’t stop the corruption. James Warner, an authority department manager, was convicted on 10 federal counts including conspiracy, federal program bribery and theft, money laundering, and obstruction in connection with a multi-million dollar kickback scheme on runway and parking structure maintenance contracts.
Atlanta – Hartsfield-Jackson Under City Control
Atlanta’s airport is run by the City of Atlanta, not an independent authority.
- Concessionaire Hayat Choudhary pled guilty to paying a $20,000 bribe to a city procurement official to win a restaurant contract in the airport’s ground transportation building.
- Federal prosecutors have pursued a broader pay-to-play scheme at Atlanta City Hall, including:
- Political operative Mitzi Bickers, convicted on multiple counts tied to steering roughly $20 million in city contracts.
- Former Watershed commissioner Jo Ann Macrina, sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for taking bribes – cash, a diamond ring, Dubai hotel stay, landscaping – in exchange for steering about $11 million in city contracts, including with the airport.
- Former city CFO Jim Beard pled guilty to stealing city funds and abusing purchasing power, including misuse of public money for personal travel.
Los Angeles World Airports
Los Angeles World Airports has had both revenue-diversion issues and ethics problems in its leadership and police force.
Improper use of airport revenue
- A 2014 DOT Inspector General audit found the FAA’s oversight had failed to prevent LAWA from improperly using more than $8 million in LAX revenues and funding.
- The same review flagged tens of millions of dollars in discrepancies between LAWA’s internal records and reports submitted to the FAA, including missing legal fees and parking revenue.
Political and police scandals
- Ted Stein, president of the LAX Board of Airport Commissioners, resigned amid allegations he had been part of an effort to pressure an engineering firm for political contributions in connection with airport contracts (he denied wrongdoing).
, LAX Airport Police Assistant Chief, resigned and later admitted to misdemeanor tax fraud tied to undisclosed income from side work with security vendors. Multiple officers accused him of favoritism and rule-bending, and his plea was part of a broader corruption-related case involving a former Port of Los Angeles police chief.
LAX lights more money on fire than Detroit, but without the same degree of demonstrated systemic rot.
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (JFK, Newark, LaGuardia)
The Port Authority isn’t just airports JFK, LaGuardia and Newark.
The “Chairman’s Flight” bribery case
Former Port Authority board chairman and ex–New Jersey Attorney General David Samson pled guilty to bribery for pressuring United Airlines to run a special, unprofitable route from Newark to Columbia, South Carolina near his weekend home in exchange for his support on Port Authority business. This brought down United CEO Jeff Smisek (the best thing to happen to United in 20 years), and came to light as part of the broader ‘Bridgegate’ scandal in New Jersey.
Denver International Airport
Denver isn’t a bribery story. It’s a competence story – but bad enough to belong in the same conversation. The airport’s introduction was a nightmare with its baggage system a failed boondoggle. Today its train breaks down stranding passengers and backing up the terminal with some regularity.
Great Hall project mismanagement
Denver’s Auditor has repeatedly shredded the airport’s handling of its multi-billion dollar Great Hall terminal renovation:
- A 2023 audit found the airport lacked a clear project-delivery process, had weak oversight over contractor costs, and exposed itself to being overcharged.
- A follow-up in early 2025 concluded that critical oversight gaps persisted, particularly around subcontractor monitoring and cost transparency, and warned of risks to cost, quality, and public trust as the project now drags toward a 2028 completion date.
Concession and contract oversight
Separate audits have found:
- Denver airport contracts and non-competitive renewals, potentially costing the airport money and raising fairness concerns.
- More recently, the auditor flagged nearly $200,000 in unallowable deductions by a concessionaire and “lax oversight” of concessionaire compliance.
So Where Does The Washington Airports Authroity Sit On This Spectrum?
Line them up:
- Detroit: decades of open cronyism plus a record-scale federal bribery conviction.
- Atlanta: the city’s airport sits inside a well-documented, multi-defendant federal corruption probe with repeated airport-adjacent bribery.
- Los Angeles: improper airport revenue use, sloppy financial reporting, board and police leadership ethics failures.
- Port Authority of New York New Jersey: bi-state patronage machine, capped by a chairman’s bribery case that literally forced an airline to fly his vanity route.
- Denver: not so much corrupt as spectacularly mismanaged and resistant to oversight.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority record looks like this:
- A federal audit describing rampant nepotism, shady contracting, and lax controls – and a congressional chair calling it a “poster child for corrupt practices.”
- Ongoing structural issues and ethics problems despite promised reforms.
- Now, eight airport police officers at Dulles gone after administrative and criminal investigations, with the focus is on illegal or improper payments from limo and ride-share drivers in exchange for access to passengers in the terminal.
That puts MWAA in the same tier as Los Angeles and Detroit: an authority that’s already been publicly flogged for governance and ethics failures, and that keeps generating new stories that rhyme with the old ones.
What Governance Structures Are Best?
My home airport in Austin has had huge governance challenges and competence problems in the past, with meddling from the city council because it lacks an independent authority. There are a number of models for how an airport is run, and generally the only thing worse than a city run department is a multi-jurisdictional agency.
- Public company: has the strongest financial discipline (markets punish visible incompetence), concentrated accountability (CEO/board can be fired while auditors and regulators watch the books). Still corruptible, but bribe and self-dealing schemes more often show up as securities or fraud cases with personal liability.
- Independent authority: has some structural insulation from day-to-day city politics which limits contracts and hiring treated as political spoils.
- Multi-jurisdiction agencies: are the worst combination with blurred accountability, multiple layers of political oversight, overlapping appointees, and the ability to blame the other state when problems arise.
Yep, and the “solution” is always the same…”We need more government oversight”.
DC seems about the same as our current administration.
Proving again the government or government sponsored entities will never operate the way morons like Bernie Sanders, AOC and Jasmine Crockett tell you they will operate.
@Mike P everyone wants oversight, but no one wants to be held accountable.
@Mike P — Anarcho-libertarianism ain’t the answer, bucko.
Thank you, @Parker, for saying what needed to be said.
“Anarcho-libertarianism ain’t the answer, bucko.”
We’re off to see the wizard!
You could have said “D.C. Airports Sit Beside The Worst-Run In The Country” and removed the ” In The” words.
Maybe it’s time to stop letting every single public entity have its own police department? There are way too many PD’s in the US.
Wow, I’m very surprised MIA didn’t make the list.
Wow, this is so rare. Let government design systems to “run it for the benefit of all,” and it ends up a corrupt mess. /s
Ask professors in economics (broadly oriented, not the narrowly focused, unless that focus is the issue at hand) to design incentive-compatible solutions. They won’t suggest the status quo, but a free-market-like system. But, of course, big government types (on the left and, now joined by some from the right) still think they can design the system, and we get this cr@p.