Ongoing growth in international travel helped propel Dulles International Airport to a record-setting year in 2025.
Officials with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) will not have confirmed final passenger counts until late February or March, but the authority’s president and CEO, Jack Potter, said the expectation is for a 6% increase from the record year in 2024.
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) officials say they are generally pleased with results of 2025 customer-satisfaction data at its facilities.
“Customers like our airports,” Gene Sutch, MWAA’s director of revenue strategy and analysis, said last Wednesday (Jan. 21) in a briefing to the authority’s business administration committee.
By JOSH FUNK AP Transportation Writer
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday he won’t forget the 67 people who died when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., in January, insisting he won’t allow operations in the airspace over the nation’s capital to revert back to the way they were before the crash.
Northern Virginia political leaders have reacted coolly to President Donald Trump’s criticisms of Dulles International Airport and his calls for a major rebuilding project there.
Trump called the airport “terrible” and suggested it was “incorrectly designed” during a Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting. Hours later, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it would seek proposals for new terminals and concourses to replace or enhance the facility, which straddles the Fairfax and Loudoun line.
People movers will continue darting across Dulles International Airport for years to come, despite recent incidents that have revived safety questions for passengers who use them.
At the Nov. 19 meeting of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board of directors, MWAA President and CEO Jack Potter acknowledged the “long-term limitations of relying on mobile lounges,” which are colloquially known as people movers.
Airlines at a growing Dulles International Airport will see higher operating costs in 2026 under a new budget adopted Nov. 19 by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA).
The $889.5 million package, adopted unanimously by the authority’s board of directors, estimates that the “cost per enplanement” at Dulles will rise from the $11.17 budgeted in 2025 to $12.77 in 2026 — an increase of about 14%.
Some existing mobile lounges at Dulles International Airport have been operating since John F. Kennedy was president in the mid-20th century, and with proper care, airport officials hope to keep them in service until almost the middle of the 21st century.
The iconic transportation equipment is a critical part of airport operations and “will remain essential for the next 15 to 20 years,” Thomas Beatty, chief operations officer for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), told the agency’s board of directors last Wednesday (Sept. 17).
With its opening just a year away, the first concessionaires have been announced for Dulles International Airport’s Concourse E.
The new food, beverage and retail stores “focus on brands that represent the regional D.C. experience,” said officials with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA).
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (WMAA) will receive nearly $7 million in federal funding to support taxiway reconstructions at Dulles International Airport.
The $6.8 million in funding represents the second-largest amount among 18 aviation-related projects approved statewide by the Federal Aviation Administration. Funding comes from a $25 billion appropriation in the 2021 Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act.
A post-Covid boom in international travel has put Dulles International Airport atop a ranking for service to Africa.
The local airport, which sits on the border of Loudoun and Fairfax counties, has now surpassed John F. Kennedy International in New York for the most nonstop destinations to the continent, with eight cities to JFK’s six.
