Origins Before
World War II,
Hoover Field was the main commercial airport serving Washington, on the site now occupied by
the Pentagon and its parking lots. It was replaced by
Washington National Airport in 1941, a short distance southeast. After the war, in 1948, the
Civil Aeronautics Administration began to consider sites for a second major airport to serve the nation's capital.
Congress passed the Washington Airport Act in 1950 to provide funding for a new airport in the region. The initial CAA proposal in 1951 called for the airport to be built in
Fairfax County near what is now
Burke Lake Park, but protests from residents, as well as the rapid expansion of Washington's suburbs during the time, led to reconsideration of this plan. One competing plan called for the airport to be built in the Pender area of Fairfax County, while another called for the conversion of
Andrews Air Force Base in
Prince George's County,
Maryland, into a commercial airport.
Design and construction The civil engineering firm
Ammann and Whitney was named lead contractor. The airport was dedicated by President
John F. Kennedy and Eisenhower on November 17, As originally opened, the airport had three long runways (current day runways 1C/19C, 1R/19L, and 12/30) and one shorter one (where current taxiway Q is located). Its original name, Dulles International Airport, was changed in 1984 to Washington Dulles International Airport. The
main terminal was designed in 1958 by famed Finnish-American architect
Eero Saarinen, and it is highly regarded for its graceful beauty, suggestive of flight. The terminal was built without any concourses and gates as all aircraft were parked at remote sites. Passengers were bussed to their aircraft by way of mobile lounges that raised up to the aircraft level; some are still in use today. The first midfield terminal that included gates and jetbridges was constructed in 1985 when
New York Air and other airlines began hub operations at Dulles. In the 1990s, the main terminal at Dulles was reconfigured to allow more space between the front of the building and the ticket counters. Additions at both ends of the main terminal more than doubled the structure's length. The original terminal at
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan, was modeled after the Saarinen terminal at Dulles. The design included a landscaped man-made lake to collect rainwater, a low-rise hotel, and a row of office buildings along the north side of the main parking lot. The design also included a two-level road in front of the terminal to separate arrival and departure traffic and a federally owned
limited access highway connecting the terminal to the Capital Beltway (
I-495) about to the east; the highway system eventually grew to include a parallel toll road to handle commuter traffic and an extension to connect to
I-66. The access road had a wide median strip to allow the construction of a passenger rail line, which opened as
an extension of the Washington Metro's Silver Line on November 15, 2022.
Later developments By 1985 the original design, featuring
mobile lounges to meet each plane, was no longer well-suited to Dulles's role as a hub airport. Instead, midfield concourses were constructed to allow passengers to walk between connecting flights without visiting the main terminal. Mobile lounges were still used for international flights and to transport passengers between the midfield concourses and the main terminal; Concourse C/D was the first to be built, followed by Concourse A/B. A tunnel (consisting of a passenger walkway and moving sidewalks) that links the main terminal and Concourse B was opened in 2004. The
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) began a renovation program for the airport including a new security mezzanine with more room for lines. A new train system, dubbed
AeroTrain and developed by
Mitsubishi, began in 2010 to transport passengers between the concourses and the main terminal. The system, which uses rubber tires and travels along a fixed underground guideway, A fourth runway (parallel to the existing runways 1 and 19 L&R) opened in 2008, and development plans include a fifth runway to parallel the existing runway 12–30. If this runway is built, the current runway will be re-designated as 12L-30R while the new runway will be designated 12R-30L. An expansion of the B concourse, used by many low-cost airlines as well as international arrivals, has been completed, and the building housing Concourses C and D will eventually be knocked down to make room for a more ergonomic building. Because Concourses C and D are temporary concourses, the only way to get to those concourses is via moving walkway from the Concourse C station, which is built in the location of the future gates and Concourse D by mobile lounge from the main terminal. In the short term,
United Airlines has constructed a buildout on Concourse C between gate C18 and the AeroTrain entrance for use as a Polaris Lounge for international passengers. Further expansion plans include a new three-story south concourse building above the AeroTrain station for Concourse C, Decades-old rules set by Congress that limit the number of takeoffs and landings, as well as distance of routes, at Reagan Airport were intended in part to keep more flights at Dulles. Those rules have been weakened by Congress over the years, however, causing Dulles to lose 200,000 passengers to Reagan between 2011 and 2013. It would include the largest airport-based solar and battery development in the U.S. as part of an agreement with Dominion Energy. The solar panels would cover more than on land, equivalent to the consumption of more than 37,000 Northern Virginia homes during peak production.
Operations and milestones Early years christening the first
Boeing 747 at Dulles on January 15, 1970.The first scheduled flight at Dulles was an
Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-188 Super Electra from
Newark International Airport in
New Jersey on November 19, 1962. The first scheduled transatlantic nonstop flight to serve the airport commenced just shy of two years later, in June 1964. Dulles was initially considered a
white elephant, being far out of town with few flights; in 1965, Dulles averaged 89 airline operations a day while
National Airport (now Reagan) averaged 600 despite not allowing jets.
Growth The era of
wide-body jets began on January 15, 1970, when First Lady
Pat Nixon christened a
Pan Am Boeing 747-100 at Dulles in the presence of Pan Am chairman
Najeeb Halaby. Rather than a traditional champagne bottle, red, white, and blue water was sprayed on the aircraft. Pan Am's first Boeing 747 flight was from New York–JFK to
London Heathrow Airport. Less than two years later, on May 24, 1976, supersonic flights between the U.S. and Europe began with the arrival of a
British Airways Concorde from London–Heathrow and an
Air France Concorde from
Paris–Charles De Gaulle; both planes were lined nose-to-nose at Dulles for photos. On June 12, 1983, the
Space Shuttle Enterprise arrived at Dulles atop a
modified Boeing 747 after touring Europe and before returning to
Edwards Air Force Base. Two years later
Enterprise returned and was placed in a storage hangar near Runway 12/30 to await construction of a planned
expansion to the National Air and Space Museum.
Enterprise left Dulles on April 27, 2012, for its new home at the
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. On June 1, 1985,
New York Air began a small hub operation at Dulles, with 35 daily flights to eight cities in Florida and the northeastern United States. On October 10, 1985,
Presidential Airways opened its hub at the airport, and it soon began a series of code-shares – first with
Pan Am from mid-1986 through early 1988, then as
Continental Express on behalf of
Continental Airlines between mid-1987 and mid-1988, and finally as
United Express, on behalf of
United Airlines, from mid 1988 until Presidential ceased operations on December 5, 1989.
United hub years, 1986 – present On May 1, 1986,
United Airlines began service on 16 new domestic routes creating a hub status at Dulles. Many more domestic routes and new overseas routes would later be added.
Air Wisconsin and Presidential Airways soon became feeder carriers for United operating as
United Express. In 1990, a
United States Senate joint resolution to change Dulles International Airport's name to
Washington Eisenhower International Airport was proposed by
Senator Bob Dole, but the bill did not pass. When the
SR-71 was retired by the military in 1990, one was flown from its birthplace at United States Air Force
Plant 42 in
Palmdale, California, to Dulles, setting a coast-to-coast speed record at an average ; the trip took 64 minutes. In 1995, the first flight of the
Boeing 777-200 in commercial service landed at Dulles; the flight was operated by
United Airlines on its transatlantic London Heathrow – Washington Dulles route.
21st century The 2004 launch of
low-cost carrier Independence Air propelled IAD from being the 24th-busiest airport in the United States to fourth, and one of the top 30
busiest in the world. Independence Air ceased operations in January 2006, and its space in Concourse A was taken five months later by
United Express. Also taking place in 2006 was the introduction of service by
Southwest Airlines at IAD. Significant growth required the airport to halt the operations of its original control tower in 2007 for a taller control tower located away from the main terminal. The original tower still exists, though it is no longer used to control the airport's traffic. A few weeks later, on June 1, the first passenger flight of the
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental – operated by Lufthansa with service from
Frankfurt to Washington – landed at IAD. Two months later, on August 15,
Ethiopian Airlines began operating service to Dulles using the
Boeing 787 Dreamliner. In the early 2010s, increased domestic travel from Reagan National Airport eroded some of Dulles's domestic routes. On October 2, 2014,
British Airways began using the
Airbus A380 on flights from London–Heathrow to Dulles. Less than two years later, on February 1, 2016,
Emirates upgraded its direct flights from
Dubai International – a service previously operated using a
Boeing 777 – to an
Airbus A380. British Airways temporarily ended A380 flights in the latter half of the decade, reverting to a
747-400 twice daily during peak season but resumed its once-daily A380 operations during non-peak season in October 2019, before once again ending A380 service to Dulles in early 2020. By 2019, Washington Dulles was one of just fourteen airports in the United States seeing daily operations from and/or having at least one gate and one runway that can accommodate an
Airbus A380; the others being
Atlanta,
Boston,
Chicago-O'Hare,
Dallas/Fort Worth,
Denver,
Honolulu,
Houston-Intercontinental,
Las Vegas,
Los Angeles–LAX,
Miami,
New York–JFK,
Orlando and
San Francisco. On May 16, 2018,
Volaris Costa Rica launched flights to Dulles, becoming the first international
low-cost carrier to serve the airport. A few months later, on September 15,
Cathay Pacific launched its longest nonstop route connecting Dulles to
Hong Kong utilizing an
Airbus A350-1000; the service was suspended indefinitely due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, four new major international routes were added.
Alitalia began non-stop service utilizing an
Airbus A330 to
Rome-Fiumicino, operating five times weekly during the peak summer season, reducing to three times weekly during the winter season.
EgyptAir operates a Boeing 787–9 with nonstop service to
Cairo three times a week year-round.
TAP Air Portugal flies five times weekly with nonstop service to
Lisbon on board the Airbus A321LR, A330-900 and sometimes the A330-200. By that May, United began non-stop service to
Tel-Aviv, initially utilizing a Boeing 777-200ER on a thrice-weekly schedule. In 2020, LOT Polish, Iberia and Swiss were all scheduled to begin service to Dulles, but these were postponed due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. LOT Polish were scheduled to provide
Boeing 787 service from Warsaw, Iberia to provide
Airbus A330-300 service from Madrid, and Swiss to provide Airbus A330-300 service from Zürich. So far only the Iberia and the Swiss routes have been implemented. In 2021, regional airline
Southern Airways Express moved their East Coast hub from BWI to Dulles. The airline announced it would operate flights between Dulles and small airports in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, some of them on
Essential Air Service contracts. Beginning in 2024, an effort by Congress has been made to rename the airport as the Donald J. Trump International Airport, in honor of President
Donald J. Trump. In April 2024, a bill was proposed in the
United States House of Representatives to rename the airport after Trump, but did not pass. A new bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in January 2025, renewing the proposal to rename Dulles after Trump; this bill was announced a few days after a similar state bill was proposed in Tennessee, to rename
Nashville International Airport after Trump. As of February 2025, more than 50 airlines serve the airport. The majority of the market share is United and United Express while other airlines focus on international routes or domestic routes not served by United.
Airbus A380 service to Dulles during the current summer season puts the airport in 3rd place for A380 flights in the US, after
New York–JFK and
Los Angeles–LAX.
British Airways and
Lufthansa fly the superjumbo to Dulles on a daily schedule from May to October, while
Emirates flies the A380 year round. Additionally, Dulles is looking to grow its international destinations in response to the regained demand for Southeast Asian service after the pandemic caused numbers to falter significantly. This growth would target cities like
Mumbai,
Taipei and
Shanghai, as well as resume service to
Hong Kong. On March 11, 2025,
Air China began serving IAD with the
Boeing 747-8i from
Beijing. Air China up until then served the airport twice weekly with the
Boeing 777-300ER. This added a second Air China 747 flight to the US after
JFK, which had been the only airport in the United States to receive Air China 747 service.
Meaning of IAD Dulles originally used
DIA – the initials of Dulles International Airport – as its airport code. ==Terminals==