Dulles ramps up airport expansion work

After a record-breaking 29 million passengers traveled through Washington Dulles International Airport in 2025, the airport appears poised to raise the bar once more.

“It looks like we’re going to be over 30 million this year, and we’re prepared for that,” says Richard Golinowski, Dulles’ airport manager.

Helping matters is the 435,000-square-foot Concourse E scheduled to open Sept. 30. The concourse will add up to 14 gates serviced by United Airlines, which has a hub at Dulles.

Concourse E is part of a $7 billion overhaul of the sprawling airport, located 25 miles outside Washington, D.C. It comes as Dulles and Reagan Washington National Airport, which are overseen by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, have come under federal scrutiny.

The January 2025 crash between a jetliner and an Army helicopter near Reagan killed 67 people and has led to Congressional and federal investigations, as well as decreased passenger numbers. Later in the year, President Donald Trump and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy criticized Dulles’ people movers, which are set to be phased out under the MWAA’s update of the airport. Meanwhile, the Transportation Department issued a request for information with a January deadline that could double down on current revitalization plans. In February, a DOT official said the department is meeting with United and MWAA about possible expansion.

Golinowski says “regular conversations” are ongoing with the agency. “I think at the end of the day, they just want us to expedite our master plan, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

That 20-year master plan forecasts as many as 90 million annual passengers after full build-out. Next, Dulles will begin construction on an additional tier that will add up to 2.8 million square feet to the 64-year-old airport by 2040.

Concourse E will open just months after a partial government shutdown mired airport travel nationwide as unpaid Transportation Security Administration employees called out of work.

Terry Clower, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, says he expects “nominal” impacts to regional air passenger numbers. Other factors, including gas prices, inflation and the National Guard’s presence in Washington, D.C., could impact summer leisure travel, he cautions.
“What will be the word for the summer vacation season?” Clower asks. “It will probably be back to the staycation that we talked about during the pandemic.”