Dulles Airport — improving!

My most recent journey was from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Frankfurt (FRA), and it was during the week that the Washington area had its heaviest snow in years.  As it seemed doubtful whether I would leave the ground at all, I decided to arrive early and resigned myself to leaving late as delays on that day seemed (and were) completely inevitable.

I have always had a thing about Dulles airport.  The worst thing is that there is almost nothing to do there.  If you are at a major international airport, whether we are talking about Heathrow (LHR) or Frankfurt (FRA), there are always shops, restaurants, and bars where you can amuse yourself.  With about 23.2 million passengers in 2009, Dulles is among the world’s top thirty airports in terms of passengers, but it really does not feel like a major airport in terms of the facilities that it offers to its passengers.

The most clunky thing at Dulles airport is what they call the mobile lounge.  These are huge buses that take you from terminal to terminal.  They are painfully slow, create extra congestion on the airfield,  and are usually crowded.

Fortunately, change is coming.  First, there seem to be lots more shops, bars, and restaurants.  An annoying thing is that you can’t actually buy your duty-free and carry it yourself to the plane — it has to be delivered.  But I think that is an “American” thing rather than something peculiar to Dulles Airport.

But perhaps the best improvement is the arrival of the AeroTrain, which opened to the public on January 26th, 2009.

Now you can simply go to a modern well appointed station and in two minutes, you can get to your terminal.  There are still mobile lounges serving Terminal C and to take international passengers to immigration and customs inspection, but what an improvement!