President Trump announced an overhaul of Washington Dulles airport on Tuesday. While short on details, the Department of Transportation will be taking bids to overhaul the airport’s mobile lounges. A bill in Congress would rename the airport for Trump.
Oddly, Trump’s recent nominee to serve on the airport authority board told the Senate in November that he would work to do away with the people mover’s if he’s confirmed. It’s not clear that the airport board was aware of any federal government plans to renovate the airport. They had no comment on the President’s announcement. It certainly appears he did not tell them first.
Why Dulles Is So Dated
United’s Washington Dulles hub has been on the chopping block many times over the past 25 years. As a result, it’s a place that’s seen little investment.
Washington Dulles built the C/D concourse that United primarily operates out of in the 1980s as a temporary facility, intended eventually to be replaced. When the airport built its AeroTrain between concourses, which went into service 15 years ago, a stop was made where a future concourse was intended to go – not where passengers have actually been flying from on United. So for the past 15 years they’ve had long walks.
These 1980s temporary sheds continue to be used because United wouldn’t invest in their replacement. In fact, significant funds have been transferred from National airport to Dulles to keep Dulles costs low and subsidize United.
It looks like Scott Kirby could get a strong return on his flattery of the President and the airline’s $1 million donation to the inauguration.
Passengers Are Still Transported To Concourses By Mobile Lounge
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.
How IAD Airport Came To Be Named Dulles
Dulles airport was originally supposed to be in Burke, Virginia (chosen over Fairfax) and the federal government began buying land. However, local residents objected. So the government condemned homes and appropriated land in the predominantly African American neighborhood of Willard instead.
During development, the airport was known colloquially as “Chantilly Airport.” President Kennedy’s FAA administrator announced it would be simply, “Washington International Airport” trying to head off the naming after former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
However Washington Dulles International Airport opened November 17, 1962 as Dulles International Airport, dedicated by President John F. Kennedy with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in attendance in attendance. Earlier legislation renamed Dulles International Airport to Washington Dulles International Airport, because it was being confused with Dallas.
John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, known for brinksmanship; “agonizing reappraisal” of the United States’ commitment to European defense if European countries did not contribute more significantly to their own defense through NATO; “massive retaliation” where any act of aggression by the Soviet Union or its allies would be met with overwhelming force, including the use of nuclear weapons; and “unleashing” Chiang Kai-shek to resume military operations against the Communist People’s Republic of China to retake the mainland.
His younger brother Allan Welsh Dulles was CIA Director from 1953 through 1961, and oversaw the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954. He was also responsible for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
United actually has a growth plan at Dulles a significant one.
And the wmaa also has a long range growth plan
Metro just Ran a new line to the airport.
Dulles isn’t going anywhere
Oh no. Ridiculous. Mobile lounges transformed into Sultan’s Carriages. Doesn’t he have other things to worry about?
maybe AA passengers at DCA won’t have to fund United IAD infrastructure for once
Ask yourself, if any other President did this, especially those from the other party, what would you think/say… a tan suit?! Dijon mustard?? OUTRAGE!!
Anyone care to take a serious guess as to why each one would take $8,000,000 to refurbish? You could build a handful of mansions or buy a dozen Ferrari’s for that much. And what’s wrong with a bus dropping passengers in a secured portal?
You made an article on that bill renaming the airport back in January. The fact it hasn’t gone anywhere since then means it’s pretty much dead, as it should be. They can rename DCA after him if they feel like it because it’s next to the city. But I’d still pick the smallest air strip in this country that hardly anyone uses.
I’m surprised Trump hasn’t started tearing it down already…after all, why wait for permission?
$392 million for 49 refurbished mobile lounges? WTF? Is 95% of the budget going directly to The Grifter in Chief?
@Gene – You need to seek help. The Bidens (to include Hunter) are the grifters.
What I am really waiting for is AA to shock the crap out of UA with XLR to London flights.
@ M&M — You seem confused. The career felonious grifter in the White House (you know, Jeffrey Epstein’s bestie) is named Trump.
@ M&M — You seem confused. The career felonious grifter in the White House (you know, Jeffrey Epstein’s bestie) is named Trump.
@ M&M — You seem confused. The career felonious grifter in the White House (you know, Jeffrey Epstein’s bestie) is named Trump.
@Michael Mainello — It’s not 2024 anymore. The old lies and propaganda don’t work much when people see the corruption and failed policies firsthand. Maybe try actually governing and dealing with affordability, for once. Oh, wait, just more ‘smash and grabs’ by oligarchs, instead. Huh. Yeah, blame the last guy going into 2026, 2028, etc.
@Gene — I actually enjoyed that 3x. Was like ‘Jingle Bells’ to my ears.
Don’t know much about IAD as I use DCA but any airport named after people that created the CIA? By far one of the history’s biggest and ongoing destructive organizations?
@George Romey — Tell us you’re a Russian asset without telling us directly… Ugh, are you really gonna make me defend our intelligence services?
@George Romey — Useful idiot, says what?
@ 1990 — You made me spit my coffee. 🙂
@George:
“Don’t know much about IAD as I use DCA but any airport named after people that created the CIA? By far one of the history’s biggest and ongoing destructive organizations”
Er George, suggest you move your gaze over to 1600 PA. That ballroom he is building is bigger than the terminal at IAD.
Airports should never be named after people, especially politicians. Washington National will ALWAYS be Washington National. The name it after the moron who broke the ATC system was ridiculous.
@Alan Z — Zing!
i read the Apport authority figures it would cost 3 to 4 million dollars to renovate each people mover. The 8 million dollars each for doing two for a pilot program, where much of it had to be custom built including the engines, lifts, interior and more. I like them better than buses that I’ve experience at many airports. And the long walk thru the PenFed hall.
To all those that are saying that President Trump wants to refurbish the mobile lounges, he doesn’t want to refurbish the mobile lounges, he wants to get rid of them ASAP instead of within 20 years which is what the airport authority was planning. It’s the airport authority, not President Trump, that wants to refurbish them. Also the DOT owns the airport, so they are within their rights to announce desired changes – and even if they didn’t own the airport, it’s OK to have a vision – now things might happen within 3 years instead of 20.
Read this article https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-launches-new-initiative-revitalize
“While the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) has plans for updates to the facility, they are insufficient to meet the need for a beautiful gateway to our Nation’s capital. For example, they retain the mobile lounges for the next 15 to 20 years at a cost of $160 million.”
It’s evident from this statement that Sean Duffy wants to get rid of the Mobile Lounges that the airport authority wants to keep for another 15 to 20 years.
Also take a look at the RFI https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/RFI_Revitalizing_Washington_Dulles_Intl_Airport.pdf
I’m a DC area resident and use IAD often for domestic and international flights on UA. I agree the situation at IAD is atrocious. The mismanagement of IAD’s evolution stretches over 50 years so there’s nothing new about its problems; it’s generational. But the end result is a perpetually dated facility that feels like an embarrassment anytime one goes through it, especially as an international passenger.
Compared to major airports in Europe such as FRA, CPH, and MUC, IAD’s intake and processing of international passengers is a comically sad experience. First, you’re herded off the heavy you just spent 8+ hours onto jetways that empty into narrow, windowless gray halls where one must wait, with the line backing up onto the aircraft everyone is trying to get off of, to be herded onto some number of mobile lounges that wreak of diesel fumes while being barked at by lounge drivers to pack it in. Once you get driven to the main terminal for Customs processing, it’s more gray and worn halls, bad signage, more people barking at you. It’s a real study in design mediocrity and bad human factors.
When Dulles implemented their Airtrain system in 2010, I was absolutely astounded that it didn’t service D concourse, where a large portion of IAD’s flights originate and terminate. It’s a near-flaccid system that feels more like an under-funded experiment than a part of the airport. The only thing the airport seems to have done (mostly) right in recent memory is the extension of Metro’s Silver line to it and even that integration has its “lol what?” aspects.
1. Airtrain needs to be expanded beyond its current token ability so that it services all concourses and at shorter intervals in a continuous, double loop. Right now, if a passenger car breaks down in the middle of the single tunnel, all Airtrain operations are halted.
2. The concourse buildings need to be reimagined in their design, with customs facilities in the concourses that terminate international flights. This would allow international arrivals to immediately enter the cleared side of the concourse, with quicker transfer to other flights.
3. Improvements to baggage transfers between concourses and the main terminal.
Trump is a moron. He’ll probably turn concourse C into a ballroom.
I learned this at the Nixon Library:
* When Nixon shook hands with Zhou Enlai at the airport during his famous visit, it was Zhou’s first time greeting an American government official since meeting John Foster Dulles. During that meeting, Dulles left him feeling humiliated.
* During the plane ride, Nixon’s advisors made sure he knew the importance of “giving face” to Zhou Enlai.
* If you watch the video, when Nixon was still 3-4 steps away from the ground, he already had his hand out to greet Zhou.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_visit_by_Richard_Nixon_to_China
@Michael Mainello
“The Bidens (to include Hunter)”
At least TRY to sound like an American if you’re gonna goon for Tangerine Palpatine.