From the beginning, Dulles International Airport promised adventure. The dramatic curve of the main building seemed to follow the ascent of an airplane in takeoff. Mobile lounges that ferried passengers directly from the terminal to the runway aimed for a new standard of comfort and convenience. Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen designed the airport to meet the growing size and needs of commercial jet aircraft, but above all he delivered a vision statement, a declaration, a vibe. A Jetsons-style promotional cartoon by mod designers Charles and Ray Eames showed a passenger thumbing through an issue of Playboy before boarding one of the airport’s signature people movers — where our man was fully expected to polish off a martini before takeoff.
When it was completed in 1962 on the outskirts of Washington, the swooping brow of the Dulles terminal was visible for miles across the farmland. Since then the suburbs have filled in, commercial air travel has exploded, and US passengers have given up formal wear for pajamas. Dulles has grown over the decades accordingly, adding concourses, expanding its historic main building and rolling out the corridors that the mobile lounges (or “jetscalators”) were meant to circumvent. Yet as it grew, Dulles was hemmed in by factors unique to its design.
Now the White House wants to make Dulles great again. President Donald Trump added the airport to the long roster of venues and amenities in and around the capital he hopes to remake in his own image. When the administration called for solicitations for Dulles in December and launched a Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council two months later, it seemed like the project might mirror the president’s other luxe plans for Washington — a classicist overhaul with more flash than substance.
The federal government’s solicitation yielded more than two dozen responses, ranging from slick renderings to mere citizen suggestions. Meanwhile, a separate proposal, one with significant institutional backing, upped the ante: The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (which operates Dulles) and United Airlines (which runs nearly 70% of the flights out of Dulles) have floated a $22 billion revitalization plan to make the airport far more effective and efficient. And it would do so at a record clip, with construction to be completed by 2034.
The pitch is outrageous in its ambition and timeline. Transforming Dulles in under eight years would make the airport a hallmark American endeavor along the lines of completing the Erie Canal. If it happens, it would be a bold stroke to show that Americans, against all odds, can build things once again. And Trump could claim it as his most useful legacy bid in the capital, one that might eventually overshadow his less popular vanity projects.
The president has put a strikingly high priority on improvements in Washington. Instead of pursuing longstanding Republican goals such as privatizing Social Security, he’s devoted his political capital to the construction of a White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch, the takeovers of the US Institute of Peace and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and an unfortunate renovation of the Reflecting Pool. He’s already outfitted the White House mansion with gold applique to match his vision of a presidential palace.
Trump’s interest in Dulles similarly originated from his desire to make it more beautiful. He has said he admires the airport’s main terminal — Saarinen’s inarguably handsome 1962 building — but thinks the airport is badly designed, a position shared by some of the president’s fiercest critics. Trump’s superficial attractions notwithstanding, his attention to the project has elicited a proposal that could bring much-needed practical improvements to streamline passenger flow and accommodate growth.
Take the mobile lounges: More shuttle bus than speakeasy, they never lived up to their Madison Avenue billing. The original idea was that, instead of passengers walking through endless concourse halls to their gates, the gates themselves would ferry travelers to their jets. The people movers are quirky, charming even, but cramming into one after a long-haul international flight can feel like an exhausting extra step. The MWAA plan would shelve the people movers, devoting billions of dollars to route travelers through an underground train instead.
The biggest obstacle for Dulles has always been adjusting its plan for growth. In the airport’s first 10 years, total annual travelers grew from about 667,000 to more than 2.6 million. While it was an underperformer for many years, its numbers improved after the pandemic; a record 29 million people flew through Dulles in 2025. To keep up with demand, the airport has built out a hodgepodge of temporary concourses and connectors, resulting in exactly the tedious experience Saarinen aimed to circumvent.
The MWAA proposal would correct those shortcomings, most of which stem from the original sin of planning an airport without gates. As first reported by Edward Russell of Airport Architecture, the MWAA vision would expand the main terminal building, renovate or construct four concourses and extend the underground train. (The MWAA says it is awaiting an official announcement of the government’s decision on Dulles before commenting on the initiative.)
The MWAA and United are not shy about their ambitions: At an event in March, United CEO Scott Kirby said that Dulles is going to be “the best airport in the country.”
Few of its frequent fliers would even describe Dulles as the best airport in the region. Even with the airport setting new records, it doesn’t crack the top 20 list of American airports by traffic. And Dulles doesn’t pull half the passengers of the world’s busiest airports. Yet the $22 billion price tag for the proposed renovation would be on par with what was spent on Doha’s Hamad International Airport, the ultra-luxe global hub for Qatar Airways, according to Michael McElvaney, CEO of the aviation and airport consultant AeroOps.
Moreover, Dulles is not a transportation hub in a technical sense. In 2024, 73% of the trips to or from Dulles were O&D, that is, origin or destination, making Dulles an airport for departures and arrivals, not transfers. On this point, the Trump administration has argued that the stature of these visitors — global CEOs and heads of state — makes the case for upgrading Dulles. “Does Washington want to have an airport that everybody looks down on? A lot of this is about pride,” McElvaney says.
Finishing any of the enhancements in MWAA’s proposal for Dulles would be difficult by the typically glacial timelines associated with US infrastructure projects. Finishing all of them, simultaneously, on time and under budget, would be a miracle. Airport consultants, some of whom say they hope to work on Dulles, say it’s not impossible. But the kind of showpiece Trump may have in mind, like the glittering hubs of the Middle East and Singapore’s Changi Airport, only happens because leaders in those regions build an airport as a major national project with direct government funding.
Improvements at Dulles would be covered in large part by passengers. Russell reports that the MWAA proposal would bear a “cost per emplanement” of $90.64, meaning that amount of each ticket into or out of Dulles would go just toward the debt. One key test for Dulles will be whether the enhancements will bring more flyers into the capital region, which would help reduce the per-person cost — that, and whether the work can be done without cost overruns or delays.
Even a more modest renovation could still go sideways for all the normal reasons that infrastructure budgets and timelines spiral out of control. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about what Trump envisions for the airport.
There’s at least reason to believe that Dulles could go better than the other projects Trump has pursued in Washington during his second term. Fixing Dulles isn’t an aesthetic endeavor; it’s not something the president can do on the fly, either. In Dulles the administration’s impulses may align with the recommendations of experts and the wishes of locals alike. That would make the airport an outlier in the developer-president’s gilded agenda.
But make no mistake: Spending $22 billion to rip out the plumbing at Dulles and remake it as the nation’s greatest airport, in a demonstration of heretofore-unseen levels of resolve and efficiency, is neither a minor plan nor a subtle one. Fast-tracking a total overhaul of Dulles to build a great airport will take the kind of radical will that gave rise to Dulles in the first place.