Washington Dulles International Airport

Washington Dulles International Airport
IADKIAD

Washington Dulles International Airport

Dulles, United States · North America
North America America/New_York IVCA 57.9
159direct destinations
45airlines
4runways
3,505 mLongest runway
2,872Aircraft documented
1962opened

Washington Dulles International Airport ( DUL-iss; IATA: IAD, ICAO: KIAD, FAA LID: IAD) is the primary international airport serving Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It is located 26 miles (42 km) west of downtown Washington, D.C., in Loudoun and Fairfax counties in Northern Virginia. Opened in 1962, the airport is named after John Foster Dulles, an influential secretary of state during the Cold War who briefly represented New York in the United States Senate. Operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Dulles occupies 13,000 acres (20.3 sq mi; 52.6 km2); IAD ranks third in the United States in terms of land area, after Denver International Airport and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The "striking" and "iconic" Eero Saarinen-designed Main Terminal received vast acclaim for its innovative architecture when it was completed and has gone on to win numerous awards. As of 2024, it is the 24th-busiest airport in the United States, with 27.3 million enplanements. It had more than 20 million passenger enplanements every year from 2004 to 2019. An average of 60,000 passengers pass through Dulles daily to and from more than 139 destinations around the world. Dulles has the most international passenger traffic of any airport in the Mid-Atlantic outside the New York metropolitan area, including approximately 90% of the international passenger traffic in the Baltimore–Washington region.

Location

Mapa

38.944°N, 77.456°O · 95 m s. n. m. (312 ft)

General data

CountryUnited States
CityDulles
Coordinates38.944°N, 77.456°O
Elevation95 m s. n. m. (312 ft)
Time zoneAmerica/New_York
Longest runway3,505 m
OperatorMetropolitan Washington Airports Authority
Opened1962
Direct destinations159
Passengers per year29,000,000 (2025)

Runways · 4

01C/19C
Length3,505 m11,499 ft
Width46 m151 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓
01R/19L
Length3,505 m11,499 ft
Width46 m151 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓
12/30
Length3,201 m10,502 ft
Width46 m151 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓
01L/19R
Length2,865 m9,400 ft
Width46 m151 ft
SurfaceConcrete
Lighted✓

Lengths and surfaces from the public OurAirports register; open runways only.

Radio frequencies · 16 Official publication

Tower

120.100RWY 01R/19L120.250RWY 01C/19C134.425RWY 01L/19R, 12/30

Ground

121.625SECT W121.900SECT E

Clearance delivery

135.700

ATIS (automatic information)

134.850ATIS · MET

Approach

120.450SECT 241-330126.100SECT 331-090128.525SECT 091-240132.850STAR133.000STAR

Departure

125.050SECT 300-010126.650SECT 190-300

UNICOM

122.950

Apron

129.550
Look for a live feed on LiveATC External site; not every airport has a feed.

Frequencies from the official publication: FAA NASR, AIRAC 01 OCT 2026, checked on Oct 16, 2026. They change with each amendment: not for navigation without checking the current AIP. See the official publication In MHz.

History

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. The current site was selected by President 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 site selection, the unincorporated, largely African-American 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 and Eisenhower on November 17, 1962. 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 17 miles (27 km) 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. 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.

Photo: Burkhard Mücke · CC BY-SA 4.0 · view original

Data from OurAirports (public domain) · destinations and airlines from Wikipedia route tables (CC BY-SA, 2026), unless another source is given · profile and photo from Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons (CC0 / CC) · summary and history from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

Cite

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This page was last updated on October 16, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 16). Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD

MLA

“Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD).” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 16 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD).” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 16, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_airport_iad,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-16},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airport/IAD |title=Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-16 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}