Dulles Airport's mobile lounges to survive until the mid-2030s

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The both loved and hated jet-age mobile lounges at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) have a bit more life left in them yet.

The vehicles that ferry travelers to and from several of IAD's concourses and the international arrivals facility cannot be retired until the mid-2030s when several critical pieces of the airport's $19.9 billion redevelopment are complete, a timeline presented Wednesday by airport operator the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) shows.

The authority must build a new connector building between the historic Eero Saarinen-designed main terminal and Concourse A-B and extend the underground AeroTrain before the lounges can be parked for good.

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Those projects are not scheduled for completion until 2034, said Keith Autry, the vice-president of engineering and Dulles Capital Programs at MWAA, at a board meeting on Wednesday.

The plan to redevelop Washington Dulles International Airport. MWAA The mobile lounges, and their sister vehicles "plane mates," were part of Saarinen's original vision for IAD. That plan included a single terminal building where travelers could check in, walk across the building and board a lounge that would take them directly to their plane. No long walks or jetways required.

The lounges, however, proved ill prepared for the boom in air travel in the coming decades. Many major airports, IAD included, moved to layouts that facilitated large numbers of connecting fliers — leaving the mobile lounges an anachronism of another era.

Today, the lounges remain in service at IAD mostly to the ire of travelers arriving on long-haul international flights who must wait for the shuttles to take them to customs.

"It's an impossible airport: You go off a bus, you get into a train. You get off of a train, you get into another bus," as President Trump said of the lounges in June.

Dulles redevelopment is a go

"The project expedites the modernization of Dulles International to make it a world-class gateway to the nation's capital, improving safety and efficiency, enhancing gate capabilities and the overall improved passenger experience," said Andy Rountree, the chief financial officer of MWAA, at the meeting.

The airport authority's board unanimously approved the capital program on Wednesday.

Work on the massive build out of IAD is already underway. The first piece, a 14-gate section of Concourse E situated above the current AeroTrain station for Concourse C, is on track for completion in September and will open before the end of the year.

Concourse E will be used by United Airlines and includes a new 40,000 square-foot United Club with a design inspired by Washington, D.C.'s original city plan by Pierre L'Enfant.

The authority is also due to receive on Wednesday the first responses from firms interested in the up to $6.5 billion contract to redevelop and expand the Saarinen terminal, build the connector to Concourse A-B, renovate and expand Concourse A-B and other enabling works. Work on the critical package of the IAD redevelopment is scheduled to begin next year, Autry said.

Other aspects of the IAD redevelopment will begin in the coming months. Work on the AeroTrain extension and a new underground central spine is set to begin in 2029; later phases of Concourse E-F that will make it a 50-plus gate concourse for United in 2027; and the first phase of Concourse G in 2028. A planned regional Concourse B and later phases of Concourse G-H are postponed until the end of the 2030s.

Concourse E-F is due for completion by 2032 and the first phase of Concourse G by 2031, Autry said.

Importantly for any United flier who has used IAD, the opening of the new concourses will allow the authority to demolish the "temporary" Concourse C-D in 2031.

The IAD redevelopment "will put us in a good posture in terms of our ability as an airport to compete with others, to garner the service that we seek to have [and] as many airlines as we possibly can at Dulles airport," said Jack Potter, president of MWAA, at the meeting.

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