The Long History of Washington Dulles Airport
Dulles Airport is recognizable to many by the iconic exterior design of its main terminal. When it was finished in 1962, it was seen as possibly being the next revolution in air travel by introducing the mobile lounge. However, the plan that Dulles had ended up being a flunk, and resulted in Dulles currently being the historical, but somewhat dreary airport that it is today. It is my home airport, I have traveled through Dulles dozens of times, and I figured that I would write a post about one of the world’s most famous airports and failures.
Dulles’ Beginnings
In 1950, the US Congress approved the Washington Airport Act of 1950 which warranted the design and building of a new airport to serve the nations’ capital, as National Airport (now Reagan National Airport) was at its capacity. Chosen by President Eisenhower was a 3,000-acre site northwest of Washington DC in Loudoun County, Virginia. At the forefront of designing the airport was Eero Saarinen, the Finish-American architect who also designed the TWA Flight Center at New York JFK Airport, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis Missouri, and the “Tulip Chair.” Construction of the airport started in 1958 and was finished in 1962.
The main terminal had a neo-futuristic look and was 200 feet wide by 600 feet long and had two levels – a large upper level for departures and a smaller lower level for arrivals. In 1962, the airport opened with a rather large dedication ceremony by President John F. Kennedy, celebrating the “revolutionary” design of the new airport. Originally, only American, Braniff, Delta, Eastern, TWA, and Northwest Orient served the airport. The airport was named after John Foster Dulles, the
Dulles’ Vision – The Mobile Lounge
Possibly even more iconic than the actual terminal, the Mobile lounge, also known as the People Mover or Plane Mate, was part of Eero Saarinen’s vision for Dulles. In the 1960s, airport terminals had gotten larger and larger to the point at which it took longer and longer to actually get to your gate instead of just being small buildings with a couple of airplanes sitting right by the small terminal. Dulles aimed to fix that problem by introducing the mobile lounge, although history shows that the problem that they were aiming to fix wasn’t really a problem, as most large airports today have even longer and spread apart terminals.
Mobile lounges are vehicles that can dock to both an airport terminal and airplanes (in the same fashion as jetbridges do) and can move up and down to be able to reach most types of planes, even modern day widebodies. Inside the vehicle was a “lounge” with seating inside it. The overall idea was that mobile lounges would decrease the amount of time that it would take to go through the overall airport experience. It also would eliminate having to build long buildings to be able to accommodate all of the aircraft. Also, each of the mobile lounges can hold up to 90 passengers, easily enough to fill
Here was the thinking behind it: You arrive at the airport 45 minutes or less before your flight and check your bags at the airline’s desk. Then, with 30 more minutes to go, you go to the mobile lounge, sit down in there in “luxury.” Then, with fifteen minutes scheduled before your flight time, with everyone on the mobile lounge for the flight, the vehicle takes a short drive to your airplane, and without leaving your seat, the mobile lounge raises itself to level with the plane, docks with the aircraft. You then take your seat on the airplane, without having to deal with the hassle of walking down a long airport terminal or dealing with thousands of people in a large waiting area.
The idea wasn’t originally a flunk. It actually caught on at multiple airports, that liked the idea of the mobile lounge. At its peak, it was in use at other airports such as St. Louis, New York JFK, Montreal Mirabel (the entire airport was based on using the mobile lounge, but the airport has since been shut down), Montreal Trudeau, Jeddah, Mexico City, Philidelphia, and Baltimore. However, since then, most of those airports have completely scrapped the mobile lounges, and even if you do see them at an airport besides Dulles (I recently spotted a couple at BWI), they probably aren’t in use. In fact, NASA also used some of them to move astronauts around!
So what went wrong? There’s no definitive answer why, as I personally don’t think that the idea is too far fetched. There have been multiple times that I have been annoyed by having to connect from one end of the airport to another just after getting off a 12-hour flight. But firstly, it turned out that building long and large terminals ended up not being a problem, and that if you do need to have remote gates (such as in Frankfurt), that simply taking a bus and boarding via airstairs wasn’t a problem. Secondly, trams at airports were later introduced, which either are located underground or above ground which transport people from terminal to terminal, like the one there currently is at Dulles, meaning that you don’t have to walk as much to get to your gate.
Third, the mobile lounges to many people are a burden instead of a luxury, as many passengers would prefer to just take a tram or a moving walkway to get to their gate or exit instead of taking a bus. Fourth, only using mobile lounges at Dulles was impractical; there originally were only 26 gates, and Dulles needed to expand – building long stretches with mobile lounges would defeat the problem it was trying to solve
Since then, more modern versions of the mobile lounge have been created, recognizable by the cones on the top of the vehicle. Currently, the mobile lounge is still in use at Washington Dulles in several ways. It used to bring people from the main terminal to the remote terminals, although now an underground train brings people to Concourses A, B, and C, so the mobile lounge now only brings people from the main terminal to Concourse D, and connects people from Concourse D, part of United’s main C/D concourse, to Concourse A, where United operates a few regional gates. Mobile lounges also are used to take passengers from international arrivals gates at the A, B, and C concourses where people disembark at a jetbridge and then take a mobile lounge.
Additionally, the mobile lounge stopped being used for embarkation when the H Gates which were connected to the main terminal stopped being used ten years ago in 2009. However, mobile lounges are still used for disembarkation from a few international flights a few days of the week, such as on Turkish Airlines or Qatar Airways. Overall, the mobile lounges have lost their glamor, and are mostly looked at as a hassle now.
In With The Jetbridges, Out With The Mobile Lounges
By the early 1980s, Dulles realized that they’d need to expand. They then scratched the idea of having an airport entirely made up of remote gates accessed by mobile lounges and started developing what I call Dulles’ second failure – a “temporary” terminal. By 1975, over 2.5 million passengers served Dulles, and it was eventually realized that they would need another terminal to supplement the existing mobile lounge gates. Plans for a temporary midfield terminal were made, and behold, Terminals C and D were built in 1985.
They were first thought to be temporary, and soon were the home of most departures at Dulles, including United’s hub at Dulles, which opened in the mid-1980s. It mostly served United, but a little known fact was that up until the mid-2000s, other airlines, including American, British Airways, and Lufthansa went out of the C/D Concourse. Around that time, there also was a concourse built at the main terminal that had actual gates, not just remote gates with mobile lounges, that was originally called the A & B gates and later were renamed the T Gates. The T Gates became a United hub for regional gates for a time being up until the early 2000s.
In 1991, the International Arrivals Building was completed, which at that time was a completely separate building from the main terminal. Passengers were brought there via mobile lounge directly off of the airplane. Then in 1996, the Main Terminal expanded horizontally to make room for more check-in, arrival, and TSA Checkpoint areas. In 1998, the first “permanent” concourse – Terminal B was completed with 20 gates. At the time, and still to this day, it serves a majority of non-United domestic and international airlines. Terminal B was located in between the main terminal and Concourses C and D. Later, in 1999, Concourse A was completed which was attached to Concourse B in the second midfield concourse. It was built with 36 regional gates (but named A 1-6), and, in addition to serving mainly United Express through the years, it also served Independence Air from 2004 to 2006, a regional carrier based out of Dulles that ceased operations in 2006.
For a short time in the early 2000s up until about 2006, another regional terminal was in operation at Dulles that was located beyond Concourse C and D, which was called Concourse G. It was accessed by mobile lounges, and was known to be very crowded. At that point in time, the mobile lounges were still in major use for both embarking and disembarking aircraft from the H Gates, among secondary airlines that served the airport. In 2005, a new concourse, attached to the main terminal, Concourse Z, was completed. It originally served mainly US Airways, although, after its merger with American, it is now used by Frontier and Air Canada. In 2007, Concourse B was expanded and added 15 new gates, and further allowed airlines to move away from the mobile lounge. In 2007, the new control tower beyond Concourses C & D was completed, and in 2008, the airport’s fourth runway, 1L/19R was completed.
A New Era?
A major step in moving away from the mobile lounge occurred in 2010 when the new Aerotrain system was completed. It is an underground train system that has two train lines, one running to Concourse B, and another running to Concourses A and C. When that occurred, mobile lounges no longer ran to transport passengers to Concourses A, B, and C. You may notice that there is not a train that runs to Concourse D, so mobile lounges still transport passengers from the main terminal there. The only other problem is that the aerotrain doesn’t actually run to Concourse C; it runs to a station beyond Concourse C. This was because it was thought that a replacement to the “temporary” Concourse C/D would be built in the not so distant future a ways away from the current terminal, although still no official plans have been made to do so, so passengers have to take a rather long moving walkway to get to the actual concourse from the station, which I personally find ridiculous.
In 2011, the new International Arrivals Building was completed, although passengers still have to take mobile lounges to get there, as the aerotrain does not run there. Since then, no major changes have occurred to the airport, besides United’s development of their hub there, which included adding flights to many more destinations such as Lisbon, Barcelona, Edinburgh, and in the close future Tel Aviv, although also saw the elimination of a few routes such as to Rio de Jianaro or to Buenos Aires, as a result of the merger with Continental. Additionally, other airlines have added flights to Dulles, including a Cathay A350 flight to Hong Kong, an Alitalia flight to Rome, an Air India flight to Delhi, an Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi, and in the near future an Egyptair flight to Cairo. But besides new routes and maybe a couple more lounges, Dulles hasn’t had any major developments since then.
1950s design and tech mobile lounges still are used to disembark some passengers are used to get to Concourse D and bring passengers to the International Arrivals Building. What I call one of the worst and most overcrowded terminals in America, Concourses C, and D, created as temporary terminals, still serve as the hub of United at Dulles and have a dreary interior, dismal seating, and uninspiring is much too soft a word to describe it. Yes, Concourses A and B are more modern, but United’s regional section of Concourse A is equally as bad as Concourses C and D, with overcrowding being a major problem. Also, during the European rush time (4-6 PM), United Clubs get extremely crowded and are hardly better than a good airport terminal. I would go as far as to say that Dulles is one of the worst airline hubs in America, besides all of the New York Airports :).
A Concourse C/D refresh has been in need at Dulles for at least the past 15 years, and there is no end in sight. United has plans to build a $34 Million 20,000 Square Foot Polaris lounge in the current C/D terminal, which in theory is good, although in practice means that United has no plans in encouraging a new terminal to be built, meaning that we’ll be stuck with Concourse C/D for probably 20 more years, as there simply are no plans in sight, and even if there were. Especially because a new terminal at DCA (also run by the MWAA) is being built, there will be money drained by the end of the new terminal (will be finished in the early 2020s), so plans for a new terminal are probably at least 10 years away. An overcrowded, poorly designed, and dated temporary terminal from the 1980s is simply unacceptable to be in use now, even more, 20 years from now.
Additionally, the new terminal still wouldn’t fix the problem of having to take the mobile lounges for all international arrivals, because of the way international arrivals work. So unless all of Dulles is redesigned, we’ll be using the mobile lounges, probably for the next decades to come. It’s simply unacceptable for a temporary decades-old terminal to be in use 50 years after it was built, as there is no way that a replacement will open before 2033 (the 50-year mark of the terminal). Dulles also recently began retrofitting the mobile lounges with WiFi and newer seats, showing that they’ll be around for the coming years.
However, a few positive enhancements will or might come to Dulles soon. Next year, a new metro will come to Dulles, connecting Dulles for the first time with DC by rail via the Silver Line. Additionally, it is a possibility that a 9,100-foot lounge will be constructed under the iconic control tower at Dulles in an area that previously served as a food court. However, no tenants have been found, although if built, a third party contractor such as Amex or another Priority Pass lounge would probably take its place in there. Additionally, in Terminal A, Dulles’ first transit hotel/lounge recently was complete. A Sleepbox location recently was built there and includes little boxes with a bed and work area that can be rented by the hour. Also, TAP Portugal will soon start flying there from Lisbon and Egyptair will soon start flying there from Cairo. So no, Dulles doesn’t have an entirely negative future, although not much good will come to the United sections of Dulles in the
Conclusion
The mobile lounge was marketed as the future of commercial aviation, and while it first was seen as a success, it eventually ended up being a failure. Dulles’ main vision contained the mobile lounge, and the failure of it has struggled to move on from it. The airport frantically built temporary Concourses C/D for quick expansion, although never received the funding to replace them. The mobile lounges never were eliminated at Dulles, and Concourses C and D still exist and will remain for the foreseeable future. Don’t get your hopes up about United’s situation at Dulles improving in the near future. It’s not going to happen. The unfortunate truth is that Concourses C and D and the mobile lounge will remain a crucial part of Dulles for decades to come.
.jpg){kind=link}
