W
ashington Dulles
International
Airport[a] (IATA:
IAD, ICAO: KIAD, FAA LID:
IAD) is an international airport
in Loudoun and Fairfax counties
in Virginia, United States, 26
miles (42 km) west of downtown
Washington, D.C. The airport
serves the Baltimore Washington
Metropolitan Area, centered on the
District of Columbia. The airport
is named after John Foster Dulles,
the 52nd Secretary of State who
served under President Dwight
D. Eisenhower. The Dulles main
terminal is a well-known landmark
designed by Eero Saarinen.
Operated by the Metropolitan
Washington Airports Authority,
Dulles Airport occupies 13,000
acres (52.6 km2) straddl ing the
Loudoun Fairfax line. Most of the
airport is in the unincorporated
community of Dulles, in Loudoun
County, with a small portion in
the unincorporated community
of Chantilly in Fairfax County.
Dulles is the one of the three major
airports in the larger Baltimore
Washington metropolitan area
with over 21 million passengers
a year. With nearly all of the
international passenger traffic in
the Baltimore-Washington region,
Dulles is the busiest international
airport in the Mid-Atlantic outside
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the New York metropolitan area.
On a typical day, more than
60,000 passengers pass through
Washington Dulles to and from
more than 125 destinations
around the world. Prior to World
War II, Hoover Field was the
main commercial airport serving
Washington. It was replaced by
Washington National Airport in
1941. 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.
The current site was selected by
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
in 1958; the Dulles name was
chosen by Eisenhower’s aviation
advisor Pete Quesada, who later
served as the first head of the
Federal Aviation Administration.
As a result of the selection, the
unincorporated, largely AfricanAmerican community of Willard,
which once stood in the airport’s
current footprint, was demolished,
and 87 property owners had
their holdings condemned. The
civil engineering firm Ammann
and Whitney was named lead
contractor. The airport was
dedicated by President John F.
Kennedy on November 17, 1962.
As originally opened, the airport
had three runways (current day
runways 1C/19C, 1R/19L, and
12/30). 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. 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
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