An In-Depth Examination of the Airlines and Airplanes That Have Flown To Washington Dulles Airport Since 1990

Washington Dulles Airport has for most of my life been my home airport, so I’ve always had a special fascination with keeping track of which airlines fly to Dulles and when and on what type of airplanes. It has had an interesting history with a (supposed-to-be) revolutionary design, although the airport did not have much service from airlines for much of its history because most domestic airlines chose to fly instead to Washington National. However, Dulles has for nearly all of its history handled most of the international flights for the DC area, and for that reason, many interesting foreign flag carriers have served the airport over the years. The airport has also been a hub for United Airlines since 1986, with the airline operating most of the airport’s traffic ever since then. For all these reasons, I find Dulles to be one of the most fascinating airports in the United States, and I have long wanted to be able to see data regarding routes and airlines at Dulles.

Fast forward to the summer of this year and I stumbled upon the T-100 database, which is published by the United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The database is publicly available and has data from 1990 on, detailing which airlines flew where in which years and on what aircraft type in the United States. The data isn’t presented in a very friendly way (there are services like Cirium that have the data available in a much more presentable way, although they cost money and are mostly used by professionals, not enthusiasts) and it takes a bit of time to download. However, once downloaded, it’s very easy to present and analyze on programs such as Microsoft Excel, which I use in this case. (I actually primarily used the T-100–along with the similarly published DB1B dataset–for a different project where I analyze the effects that de-hubbing has on average airfares. I’m almost done writing a research paper for that and will publish it on this website as well). 

In this article, I analyze the service changes that have occurred at Washington Dulles Airport since 1990 in terms of the airlines that served Dulles, the aircraft they used, and the destinations that they flew to. I analyze this data in four sections: firstly, I look at the general data compiled from all airlines that served Dulles; secondly, I look at the international flights flown by United, along with other US airlines; thirdly, I look at the international flights at Dulles flown by foreign airlines; lastly, I look at domestic flights out of Dulles. In the three last sections, I exclude data for flights that were only flown a couple of times, so that I don’t include one-off charter flights, diversions, or aircraft substitutions. I also publish the raw data that I collected from the T-100 database below as an Excel file. In it, I first sort data by the three sections that I use in the article (United International, foreign international, domestic) and then provide data tables that further sort the data by airline, aircraft type, and destination. I use pivot tables for analyzing the data, so you can see more specific information if you click on individual data points. I also include a reference table for the codes for airlines and aircraft types that are used in the T-100 database.

My goal with this article and database that I compiled (as with future ones if I write more of these) is to provide a reference source for aviation enthusiasts and simply those curious about the airport alike, to be able to easily see when and where every airline that flew to the airport flew there from, and on what aircraft. I then try to provide a bit of commentary and analysis on the data that I collect. Of course, all of this data is publicly available on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website, and there are much better ways out there to view this data (like Cirium, etc.), but those all require professional subscriptions, cost a lot of money, etc. 

Lastly, unfortunately, you do have to take some of the T-100 with a grain of salt. A couple of times airplanes are seemingly incorrectly coded (so, you say that British Airways flew the 747SP between Dulles and Heathrow in 2019 on 39 occasions…yeah, right) and there are a few instances where airlines with the same code but operated in different decades are incorrectly labeled. Another common mistake. is that the A340-300 is often mislabeled as the A340-200. It also seems as if some 787-8s are incorrectly coded as 767-300s for some reason. So if some of the data looks preposterous and blatantly false…it probably is. But I did attach the lookup tables for aircraft and airlines that I used to label the data that hopefully you could use to find a reasonable explanation for any irregularities. 

United/Other US Airlines International Flights

Given Dulles’ status as a United hub since the 1980s, United has been the primary American carrier out of Dulles in terms of international flights for about 30 years. Thus, in this section, I primarily focus on the history of the international route network of United Airlines out of Dulles since 1990, although I do briefly describe the international service of other US airlines from Dulles at the end of this section. United first started transatlantic service in 1990, when it commenced service from both Chicago O’hare and Washington Dulles to Frankfurt (which, coincidentally, was also the first flight I ever took in my life!). United’s other first two international routes out of Dulles were Cancun and Mexico City, both of which also began in 1990. In 1991, United increased its international presence at Dulles, after they acquired some of Pan Am’s transatlantic assets, mostly out of London Heathrow. Soon after, United dramatically increased its transatlantic service out of Dulles, commencing service to many of Europe’s other largest cities, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Madrid, among others.

In the 1990s, United also served several unique destinations in Europe that it has since ceased operations to. Among those is Milan, which United served on-and-off (although year-round from 1996) between 1992 and 2003, at very first onboard the 747-100(!), although for most of its history onboard the 767-300. Given the size and popularity of Milan and its surrounding areas, it’s somewhat surprising that United hasn’t resumed its Dulles to Milan route, although this is in part the fault of United choosing to expand in Milan with a new seasonal flight out of Chicago instead.

Interestingly, United also served Glasgow from Dulles between 1993 and 1995 on the 767-200. Over the past decades, Glasgow Airport has been in decline, with most of Scotland’s transatlantic flights having been shifted over to Edinburgh, which is more popular with American tourists. One of the destinations that I did not know United previously served from Dulles is Düsseldorf, which it served for only in 2002 onboard the 767-300.

United would continue to make minor modifications to and slowly grow its Dulles international throughout the 1990s, although it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that United would significantly grow its international Dulles operations. United launched South American service out of IAD in 2002, when it launched flights to Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, both onboard the 767-300. Sao Paulo even went double-daily for a few months of the year between 2005 and 2007! United even launched flights to Rio de Janeiro in 2007, also on the 767-300, although United downsized its South American network out of Dulles in 2011 and 2012 when it canceled both its Buenos Aires and Rio flights out of Dulles, preferring instead to solely fly to those two destinations from its hub in Houston that it gained after merging with Continental.

United began service to East Asia from Dulles in 2006 to Tokyo Narita, which was supplemented by flights to Beijing which began in 2007. Both flights were operated by the 777-200 and 747-400 at times, with Beijing also having been operated by the 787-8. United continued nonstop service to both airports from Dulles until COVID, after which United shifted Tokyo services to Haneda and (seemingly) permanently cancelled its flight to Beijing. 

Another interesting route that United served at about this time was to Moscow Domodedovo Airport, which it served between 2009 and 2012 onboard the 767-300. United also served Madrid onboard an A330 operated by Aer Lingus between 2010 and 2012. I had the pleasure of flying on this exact route in 2012 (proof there on the left!), although I was quite young at the time. I don’t know why United and Aer Lingus engaged in this bizarre collaboration, although it certainly made for a unique experience. United also operated a flight from Dulles to Accra which continued to Lagos between 2010 and 2012 onboard. the 767-300. United only recently resumed flying to both destinations (albeit separately on two 3x weekly flights) a couple of years ago.

Another interesting instance in United’s international network out of Dulles was its flights to the Middle East. United operated two daily tag flights from Dulles to Dubai to Doha and from Dulles to Kuwait to Bahrain from 2006 and 2008, respectively, up until 2016. The route was mostly served for government and military employees and contractors, although both were discontinued after the government contract for US employees went to JetBlue instead, which routed passengers to the Middle East on Emirates instead. United only recently resumed service to Dubai this year in 2023 with their new partnership with Emirates (which came after years of United and Delta complaining about Middle Eastern airline subsidies), although this time out of Newark instead.

The most frequently used aircraft on international flights by United out of Dulles is indeed the Boeing 777-200. Despite only commencing service in 1995, 40% of all of United’s international flights since 1990 have been flown by the 777-200. In second place is the 767-300, which has flown approximately 27% of all of United’s international flights out of Dulles. The 757-200 and A320 have both flown about 6%, with the A320 and 757 historically operating flights to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the 757-200 having operated mostly to Europe since the Continental merger. The 767-200 was also key to United’s transatlantic network out of Dulles up until 1997.

The 747 has played a smaller role in United’s Dulles international route network. United first flew the 747-100 and 747-200 internationally from Dulles both from 1991 to 1996, mostly to London and Frankfurt, although also at times to Paris, Rome, and Milan. The 747 then took a short break from international service out of Dulles for United, although the 747-400 was brought to Dulles for short periods in 1999 and 2001 before returning for a longer period from 2003 until 2010. Throughout this period, the 747-400 primarily served London and Frankfurt, although it did fly to Beijing for a short time between 2008 and 2009 and to Tokyo Narita also for a short time between 2009 and 2010.

As for the other US airlines other than United that have operated internationally out of the US over the past 30 years: there hasn’t been much in the last 30 years. In 1990 and ending in 1991 (and I believe for a long while before that), Pan Am operated nonstop flights from Dulles to a few European destinations, including London, Paris, and Frankfurt. Those flights when Pan Am sold many of its transatlantic assets to United at about the same time. Pan Am’s Dulles transatlantic flights were operated both by Boeing 747-100/200s and by Airbus A310s.

Additionally, TWA operated a flight from Dulles to Paris on L-1011s and 767-200s, which ended in 1994. Northwest also operated a flight from Dulles to Amsterdam for many years in conjunction with its partner KLM mostly onboard the DC-10, although they did resume it for a year between 2008 and 2009 onboard the 757. More surprisingly to me, Delta operated a flight from Dulles to Frankfurt between 1991 and 1997 onboard either the 767-300 or L-1011. It turns out they had a mini-hub at FRA during that period that they bought from Pan Am after it collapsed. Most of the other international flights by US airlines out of Dulles in this period are either on regional carriers (mostly operating for United Express to Canada) or are charters.

Foreign Carriers

In this section, I analyze the route, aircraft, and airline data from foreign airlines serving Washington Dulles since 1990. I also include a couple of graphs that illustrate the changes in foreign carrier service.

My one comment specifically on aircraft types is that although the 767-200 was used heavily by United Airlines on transatlantic flights, the only foreign airlines that flew the 767-200 to Dulles were TACA from El Salvador and Transbrasil from Brazil. And, looking through the historical fleets of European airlines, most of the major carriers never operated or only operated a couple of 767-200s. I guess the explanation is that the Airbus A310 came out at the same time and had similar capabilities and range.

Lufthansa has flown fairly consistently from Dulles to Frankfurt, and since 2015 consistently to Munich, and on a wide variety of aircraft, ranging from the DC-10 and 747-200 in the early 1990s, to the 747-400 and A340-300 starting in the mid-1990s (the latter of which it still operates to Dulles), to now newer aircraft such as the A350-900 and 747-8. However, there are also two lesser-known short-lived routes that Lufthansa has operated to Dulles over the years.

Specifically, Lufthansa first flew from Dulles to Köln (CGN) in 1990 onboard the Airbus A310. According to an archived news article, this Dulles service from Köln began in 1990, only lasted that one season, and was complemented by flights from Köln to Newark. This service was one of two short-lived attempts at nonstop service from Dulles to the Rhine region in Germany, the other being United’s short-lived service to Düsseldorf, which I discuss later. Lufthansa additionally briefly served Berlin Tegel Airport from Dulles in the summer season of 2001, a route that would only be resumed in 2023 by United, albeit to the newer Berlin Brandenburg Airport instead. 

Transbrasil (which I only had a small knowledge of and is one of the airlines that I honestly had no idea that they flew to Dulles) seemingly flew to Washington for a short time in the 1990s. The airline seemingly flew from Washington to Manaus for a short time in 1992 before launching continuous service from Dulles to the Brazilian capital Brasilia from 1995 to 1998, with all flights taking place either onboard the 767-200 or 767-300. The airline sadly met its demise in 2001.

Aeroflot flew the Ilyushin IL-62 (now that’s exotic) to Dulles starting at the very latest in 1990 (I don’t have data earlier than that) up until 1996, although they did pause service for two years between 1993 and 1994. In 1996, they started flying the A310 to Dulles, before eventually switching to the 767-300 in 2001 and finally to the A330 in 2014.

In more recent memory, Bolivia’s now-defunct AeroSur flew nonstop to Dulles for a short time between 2011 and 2012, mostly to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, although also for a very short time to Cochabamba, which appeared to continue to Santa Cruz for the time that it operated. Service occurred onboard the Boeing 767-200, although the T-100 data suggests that they also flew the 737-300 on that route, which seems to be a coding error. 

A couple more interesting(ish) facts:

• It’s also great to see the Concorde in this data. British Airways flew the Concorde to Dulles between 1976 and 1994, although it also appears that they flew some one-off flights to Dulles on it in 1998 and 1999. Air France of course also flew the Concorde to Dulles for a time.
• Japan Airlines flew to Dulles from Tokyo Narita between 1991 and 1995. They utilized the 747-200. 
• Austrian Airlines for a time seemingly flew between Dulles and Switzerland for a time. Specifically, they flew from IAD to Geneva from 1995 to 1997 and flew to Zürich between 1997 and 1999, both taking place on the Airbus A310. Austrian also flew to their home airport, Vienna, from Dulles for a brief period in 1997, before launching the continuous service that it still operates today in 2000.
• Swissair (and for a short time its successor, Swiss International Air Lines) flew to Dulles between 1997 and 2003, onboard the (very shortly) DC-10, MD-11, and A330-200. Swiss International Airlines had announced service resumption to Dulles, planned for the summer of 2020, but that obviously did not come to fruition at the time, and they unfortunately (and somewhat surprisingly) haven’t decided to restart service since then.

• Now-defunct Spanair also flew to Dulles from Madrid between 1997 and 2001 onboard the 767-300. Their long-haul fleet was quite small, at its largest only being made up of only 3 767-300s.
• Iberia flew to Dulles between 2007 and 2010 onboard the A340-300. They resumed flights to Dulles in 2022 onboard the Airbus A330-200. 
• Somewhat similarly, Alitalia flew to Dulles between 2004 and 2006 to Milan onboard the 767-300 and MD-11, although they restarted flights to Dulles (this time to Rome) for only one season in 2019, before COVID started, leading to their eventual demise and rebranding as ITA, which now flies to Dulles. 
• Air India flew to Dulles for a short time between 2009 and 2010 onboard the 777-200 before re-launching service in 2017 onboard the 777 (both the -200LR and -300ER) and 787.
• BA premium subsidiary Open Skies (remember that!?) briefly flew from Dulles to Paris Orly between 2010 and 2011. 

Domestic Flight Data

In terms of domestic travel, United Airlines has been the largest carrier out of Dulles over the past 30 years. Most of the other largest domestic airlines of IAD have, accordingly, mostly been regional affiliates of United Airlines/United Express. Despite United’s longstanding dominance at Dulles, a few other airlines have attempted to open focus cities at Dulles, all of which have failed.

First, former low-cost carrier ValuJet Airlines had a focus city at Dulles between 1994 and 1998, using DC-9s to fly from Dulles to cities along the East Coast, the Midwest, and Florida. ValuJet, after much bad publicity for themselves after a horrific crash in 1996, merged with AirTran in 1997, with the AirTran name surviving, despite ValuJet being the larger airline. Airtran maintained smaller, yet still reasonable, services at Dulles until 2012.

In 2004, Atlantic Coast Airlines, a former regional operator of United Express and Delta Connection flights, rebranded as Independence Air. After United severed ties with them, Independence Air planned to operate low-cost flights out of Dulles Airport with CRJ-200s, along with a few A319s. Unfortunately for Independence Air, United didn’t reduce their regional flying out of Dulles and instead partnered with other regional carriers, and Independence Air just couldn’t compete with United out of Dulles, especially while mostly using a plane with fairly high per-passenger operating costs like the CRJ-200. Despite causing inconvenience for United and their passengers by forcing them to the temporary Concourse G at Dulles (since Independence was using United’s old regional facilities in Concourse A), Independence Air shut down just two years after their independent launch, and United Express soon thereafter returned to its former home in Concourse A.

Next, starting in 2006, JetBlue roughly doubled their annual departures out of Dulles, which operated as a smaller focus city for them up until roughly 2011, serving a few destinations in the Northeast, Florida, California (Oakland and Long Beach), and Puerto Rico. The focus city didn’t work out for them, and they slowly reduced operations, ultimately ending all flights to Dulles in 2019.

Lastly, Frontier Airlines opened a focus city at Dulles in 2014, soon after being purchased by private equity firm Indigo Partners in 2013 and searching for other focus cities that work outside of Denver. Frontier tried to fly to a whole bunch of destinations–both normal medium-sized to large cities such as Cincinnati or Atlanta, along with a few leisure destinations such as Fort Meyers or Las Vegas. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t work out financially for them either, and they started reducing flights from Dulles as soon as 2015. So overall, ever since the 1980s, Dulles has been the home of United, and no airline has managed to successfully compete on a large scale domestically with them.

It is, of course, also very interesting to me to see how the composition of aircraft used at Dulles (which is also somewhat reflective of the entire country) changed over time. Boeing 727s were among the most popular aircraft at Dulles throughout the 1990s, although United abruptly ended 727 service at Dulles in 2002, after which, most 727 service at Dulles was only carried out by cargo airlines such as Fed Ex. Once commonplace at Dulles and elsewhere, to me (I was only born in 2004) and other aviation enthusiasts of a younger generation, even regional aircraft such as the BAe Jetstream 41, Dornier 328, Fokker 100, or the AvroRJ/BAe146 are beyond the reaches even of our recent memory, with our knowledge of them confined only to their conceptions of mediocrity by others, unaware of our awe of the now unattainable past (okay maybe not the BAe146, I don’t think anyone hates the 4-engined baby C-17 that is the Whisperjet).

That being said, in 25 years there will probably be younger avgeeks who will say that “My only wish is that I could have flown on a CRJ-200, that plane sure was amazing,” to which I would surely only respond with incredulity at the thought that anyone would want to experience the torturous tube that is the CRJ-200. Anyways, I know I went off on a bit of a side tangent, but this is both fun and sad to think about. 

All of that aside: one of my other primary takeaways from the domestic routes data is how many fewer domestic wide-body flights there are now, as compared with the 1900s. Although, as is true today, most domestic flights out of Dulles in the 1990s were operated by narrow-body and regional aircraft, Dulles highlights the industrywide trend among US airlines that they generally don’t fly wide-body on domestic flights anymore. Sure, United, Delta, and American do sometimes fly their wide-body aircraft on inter-hub routes and to Hawaii, and maybe in the winter and spring they’ll each fly a couple of 767s or 777s to Orlando or Las Vegas, but beyond that, wide-body aircraft have gotten exceedingly rare domestically.

This phenomenon is perhaps best exemplified by when United announced a few months ago that they would fly their Boeing 777-200 between Dulles and San Diego. What was unusual about this announcement was the timing: Alaska had announced that they would start service between Dulles and San Diego only a few days prior and would then become only the second airline to fly the route. That United would fly a 777 between Dulles and San Diego seemed preposterous, and, likely was done as some sort of retaliation, a warning signal to Alaska Airlines that they dare not challenge United’s prized Dulles hub (which, mind you, former CEO Jeff Smisek had threatened to de-hub only a few years ago). While such protective strategies of their hubs are not uncommon among airlines, this instance was mostly just unusually bizarre, given the lower regard United has historically given Dulles and the very small amounts of any competition there from other domestic airlines.

Anyways, I regress. My point is simply that 30–even 20–years ago, flying wide-body jets on domestic flights that aren’t hub-to-hub or to Hawaii most definitely wouldn’t be directly assumed to be part of a short-term idiosyncratic corporate strategy, but was more than commonplace. While United did not fly wide-body jets regularly to San Diego (except for a short period in 1990 when they flied the 767-200 on the route), United, and indeed other airlines, operated robust wide-body networks to IAD in the 1990s. For instance, United regularly operated the 767-200 and DC-10 in the 1990s not just to hub airports, but even to non-hub airports such as Hartford, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, and Miami.

Although most of United’s domestic wide-body operations out of Dulles were to other hubs, its non-hub wide-body operations were considerably more significant throughout the 1990s. While perhaps Seattle and Miami are more logical destinations for wide-body aircraft, it is incredibly hard to fathom United flying a (roughly) similarly sized 787-8 on flights to Hartford, Philadelphia, or Boston from Dulles today, routes that United mostly now uses regional jets or smaller narrow-body aircraft (or in the case of Philadelphia, has ceased service altogether because the route was too short).

This phenomenon was hardly contained to only United; most other airlines that flew domestically, such as American, Delta, TWA, and even Pan Am, that operated wide-body aircraft at flew them to Dulles and on many other similar routes between other airports around the country. The removal of wide-body flights domestically of course occurred for many reasons, such as the better fuel efficiency that newer smaller aircraft can provide, along with the increased frequencies that airlines can operate with smaller aircraft. Nevertheless, I personally find it fascinating how much the domestic industry has changed in this regard over the past 30 years.

Conclusion

Washington Dulles is one of the most interesting airports within the United States in terms of the wide variety of airlines and aircraft that have flown there within the past decades. I don’t know how many people are that interested in this level of data and analysis of flights and routes that airlines flew into Washington Dulles over the past few years, but I certainly had a lot of fun looking into this data. Nevertheless, I do hope that this article can provide a small look into a time in the past of the airline industry that I didn’t personally get to experience much of, or perhaps rekindle memories in others of a previous era at Dulles. Going forward, I do hope to write more articles that provide deeper looks at the schedules of airlines at other major airports around the country.