New Concourse Likely Arriving In 2025: What Is Next In Store For Washington Dulles Airport?

It hasn’t been reported on a large scale within aviation related media, but it’s looking like Washington Dulles (my home airport) may finally get its new midfield concourse where the Concourse C train station is to replace the old “temporary” midfield concourse that has been around since the 1980s. Kind of. At the beginning of June, MWAA posted an Environmental Impact Study for a new 14 gate concourse beyond the current Concourse C, in which they also talked about why the new concourse was needed and its future uses.

While the development of this new concourse is definitely not final, based on the proposal, it is (in my opinion) very likely to be built and will have a lot of merits. In this article, I will take a look at the future of Dulles airport, including, but not limited to, the new proposed concourse, along with its impacts in regards to the airport’s largest tenant, United, and related announcements they recently made.

Why Doesn’t Dulles Already Have A New Concourse?

Back in the day, Dulles wasn’t even supposed to have any midfield concourses but was supposed to just rely on mobile lounges to ferry passengers back and forth between the main concourse and aircraft. However, this didn’t really work out once Dulles became a hub for multiple airlines, so an actual concourse became necessary, and, to keep costs down, a midfield “temporary” concourse was built. However, since then, a second midfield concourse has been built, containing Concourses A and B, which mostly serve non-United airlines, though A has a smaller section on the east side that handles United Express CRJ and ERJ aircraft (this will be very important later on in the article).

Although historically those same mobile lounges carried passengers back and forth from both main concourse, a little over a decade ago, an underground “Aerotrain” system was built to shuttle passengers back and forth to Concourses A, B, and C (not D for some reason, they still use the mobile lounges) except those arriving internationally, though the Concourse C train station was not actually built underneath Concourse C!

It instead was built about 250 meters away from the concourse, with an underground walkway connecting to the current Concourse C. This was because Dulles has planned for not years, but decades to build a new Concourse C and D out beyond the current “temporary” terminal, because, as anyone who has been to C/D can tell you, it is vastly outdated and overrun. I mean, it’s not horrendous, and there have been some renovations (mostly just consisting of new carpet, new United Club furniture, and TV screens though), though it just isn’t up to international (or even domestic) standards anymore, and has been in desperate need of replacement.

Because the Aerotrain system was planned long before it opened in 2010, the new Concourse C/D has also been in the works for that long, but it’s just never come to fruition. This has to do with the fact that United Airlines is the largest tenant of Dulles Airport and has long since been the only airline operating out of C and D, and would be the primary, if not only, carrier operating out of the new terminal. Unfortunately, United historically hasn’t wanted to invest in its Dulles hub, especially in the era immediately following the merger with Continental.

With United inheriting Continental’s Newark hub, some thought that having an additional hub at Dulles was redundant and should be severely cut (like United did with Cleveland), which would have obviously been a terrible decision, given that Newark is often overcrowded and doesn’t have much more room to grow. If I recall (this might be part rumor, so don’t quote me on this), the story goes that former (now disgraced) United CEO Jeff Smisek was advised by some analysts that he should cut the Dulles hub, which he threatened to do unless Dulles were to cut costs for them, which they ended up doing, making Dulles rather inexpensive to operate out of, in comparison to some other hubs (like SFO or EWR).

Since United was close to or at least pretended to be close to, leaving Dulles for good, you can very well imagine that plans for a new concourse were postponed by both parties. However, since then, United management has changed twice, with the last two CEOs valuing Dulles higher than Smisek did, which resulted in some increases in flights. Along with the cost cuts, this has in fact recently made Dulles (at least before COVID) one of United’s most profitable hubs. United’s recent strategy regarding Dulles and Newark has been to up gauge most flights out of Newark (I don’t think they operate many, if any, single cabin aircraft from there anymore) and focus more on O/D (local New York) demand, while focusing on making Dulles more of a hub focused on connections.

Back in 2018, United was even evaluating whether to increase capacity at Dulles; while United’s gates at Dulles are roughly all full during their departure banks (which historically have been roughly 8 AM, 12 PM, 5 PM, and 10 PM), United was considering adding two more, which would significantly increase capacity. Once demand makes a full recovery, I would not be surprised if they think again about doing this. Anyways, my main point is this: back in the early to mid-2010s, United was considering leaving Dulles, but since then, not unrelated to cost cuts that made the hub more profitable, Dulles now again plays a significant role in the United network.

What Is The Purpose Of The New Concourse?

A couple of years back, United signaled that despite their growing presence at Dulles, the current midfield concourse still isn’t going to go anywhere, through their announcement of a new Polaris lounge in the current Concourse C. The lounge is completed (but hasn’t opened yet because of COVID), and suggests that United probably isn’t planning to move out of C/D in the short term. So if United isn’t planning on leaving the current Concourse C/D anytime soon, then why are they going to be building a concourse beyond C/D, like from the original plan to replace the current concourse?

Well, it turns out, there actually is a terminal at Dulles that is in even more need of replacement than the current C/D, and that largely has to do with United’s recent growth plans. United recently announced that they were buying 270 new large narrowbody aircraft (mostly the 737 MAX 10 and A321neo), which would be part of United’s strategy shift in terms of up-gauging most of their routes from smaller to larger aircraft. Along with this was the announcement that United would be retiring roughly 200 50 seater regional jets (the ERJ145 and CRJ200) in the next few years, leaving only about 100 to serve the very smallest markets.

One presumes that this will result in 76 seater aircraft such as the E175 taking over most of the current CRJ200/ERJ145 routes, while 737-700s and A319s will take over many of the current E175 routes, while larger 737s will presumably take over routes from the 737-700 and A319 (and so on). This move would match changes at Delta and American, which have recently retired their smaller regional jets and have significantly more larger narrow-body aircraft.

Meanwhile, United’s section of Dulles’ Concourse A (there’s also a section that houses foreign mainline aircraft) consists only of a ground-floor concourse that can only house these 50 seaters (or smaller aircraft, which have since been retired from United’s fleet). Since 50 seaters will become nearly obsolete, there would be no aircraft that United will be able to fly out of their current section of A, meaning that they will need a replacement concourse if they were to not decrease their available terminal space.

So Dulles’ solution was, in order to not decrease United’s terminal space for any large period of time, to build a 14 gate concourse out beyond Concourse C. The new concourse will not be a direct replacement for the current section in Concourse A, as it will be able to house narrow-body and wide-body aircraft, along with presumably also regional jets such as the E175.

This new concourse will be located directly over the current Concourse C Aerotrain station, so they won’t have to worry about building a new underground rail system, which should speed things along. Ironically, it will be located where the originally planned replacement concourse for C and D was supposed to be located, but in the short run, it won’t even be used to replace it! Passengers would be able to access Concourses C and D through the current underground walkway from the Aerotrain station to C.

Additionally, while partially unrelated, it is quite possible that this has to do with the new section of National Airport’s new regional concourse, which recently was finished. As Dulles and National are both under the jurisdiction of the MWAA, it makes some sense that once one project is completed that they are in the preliminary process of starting another.

How Would The New Concourse Be Used?

In terms of its specifications, the new concourse will have three levels and have about 535,000 square feet of space. The second floor would be the main departures level, while the third floor would have an airport lounge, presumably a United Club. Based on the diagram shown, the concourse would be able to handle either 7 wide-body aircraft or 14 narrow-body aircraft in a flexible layout. It is unknown whether the concourse will be capable to handle international arrivals, though if it does, it would then need to be able to handle Dulles’ signature Mobile Lounges, like United does currently in Concourse C.

My guess is that this facility will mostly handle mainline operations of United Airlines, while most of their regional operations will most likely be out of C and D going forward, which is where their E175s (which will probably be the main regional jet in United’s fleet going forward) currently operate out of. This is again only a guess, but I would think that United would prefer to operate their more “flagship” mainline routes out of their only pleasant concourse, instead of having their regional E175s using it. If this is the case, it is quite possible that more gates from the main C/D concourse would be reconfigured to handle regional jets.

The current plan is that once the new concourse (which possibly would be known as Concourse E, though this is just a guess though) is built, the United section of Concourse A will be demolished and will not be replaced with a new concourse. Instead, it will make way for hardstand aircraft parking. However, it wouldn’t make that much sense to not build a replacement facility in such a logical place for a concourse, especially when Dulles needs more gate space.

While most of United’s gates are not full during the majority of the day, during their main departure banks, United doesn’t have much more room to expand, recently resulting in them using some gates in Concourses A and Z (which isn’t generally done). Given this need for more gates and the fact that most international gates in A/B are filled during most of the peak European departure times, I think that a replacement concourse where the current United Express section of Concourse A is located is extremely likely.

At least, in the long run, I would think that eventually a new replacement of the current United section of Concourse A will be built that will house mainline gates and uniformly connect to the current main section of Concourse A. I personally believe that the most likely explanation is that they would only get around to building this extension starting in 2025, so it just isn’t included within the realm of this project because it’s simply too early to formalize plans for a concourse that probably wouldn’t be built before 2027-2028 at the very earliest.

But What About The Current Concourse C/D! When Will They Be Replaced?

Unfortunately, because the new potential “Concourse E” will not replace the current C/D at all, it is very likely that the current C/D facilities will be in operation for at least another decade, very likely for more. Once United’s section of Concourse A is demolished and the new concourse beyond C is built in 2025, the next project for Dulles would probably be to build a new section of Concourse A where United’s current regional facilities are now, as I mentioned earlier. It’s not guaranteed that they even would build it or that they would build it right after the current east end of A is demolished, but if they decide to, it would very likely come before any extension of the new concourse beyond C/D.

However, if the current United regional section of Concourse A is indeed replaced with a more conventional facility capable of handling mainline aircraft, as stated earlier, it probably wouldn’t be completed before 2027 or 2028 (if they begin construction right after the current facilities are demolished and the current “Concourse E” project is on-schedule). However, given that there’s so much that could delay the new “Concourse E” out beyond C/D which would inherently delay the construction of the extension of Concourse A, and it’s quite possible that they would wait a few years before building the extension (which isn’t even in any official plans as of the moment!), I doubt realistically that a potential new concourse where the current United regional facilities are would come before 2029-2030, maybe even later.

Given the assumption that the MWAA doesn’t have unlimited money (unlike Dubai and Abu Dhabi) and United hasn’t exactly been in a rush to replace their Dulles facilities, and given that it’s unlikely that they would begin construction on the full replacement of C and D before the potential extension of A is built, it’s likely that the full extension wouldn’t come until the mid-2030s. I could be wrong, and given United CEO Scott Kirby’s recent investment in United Airlines’ products and emphasis on their Dulles hub, it’s possible that United would prioritize the construction of a new full-length concourse. However, we will, unfortunately, most likely have to live with the current Concourse C/D for at least another decade and a half, though the good news is that within the next five years, there will at least be a new United concourse at Dulles.

For clarification, here’s an annotated map I created displaying all of the future and hypothetical developments at Dulles.

Conclusion

Dulles Aiport recently announced early plans to build a new concourse out beyond the current C/D, which would consist of up to 14 gates. The concourse would originally be planned to replace United’s current section of Concourse A, which would be demolished one the new concourse is built in 2025. While it is only being officially planned now, a new concourse at Dulles has long been necessary. Once this occurs, it is possible, if not likely, that a new replacement extension of Concourse A would be built, and in the long-term, it is possible that a full-length extension of the new concourse would be built in order to fully replace the current C and D facilities.