National Airport Finally is Upgrading!
Good news if you’re flying domestically into our nation’s capital, Washington, DC: the airport is looking to upgrade it’s facilities and add some gate space!
If you’re not familar with Washington, there are two airports serving the city. National airport supports only domestic and pre-arrival clearance international flights, while Washington Dulles Airport supports all the larger long haul and international flights for the DC and Northern Virginia area. National is considered the “convenient” airport to most in DC as it’s located right on Metro system served by both the Blue and Yellow lines unlike Dulles which is a hefty 30 minute drive from the city center.
If you have been ‘lucky’ enough to fly through National Airport on the ‘New American’ – which is the old US Airways you know, that the design was flawed for ever using the airport as a connecting point. Often you have to go from one concourse to another and that means exiting the secured area and being rescreened or taking an overcrowded shuttle bus to the next concourse. What’s worse is if you’re connecting to a regional jet, or even worse connecting from one regional flight to another, you’ll need to take a bus from a VERY crowded gate 35A off to a parked airplane with no jetbridge connecting it to a terminal. This can cause some serious issues of you’re already delayed or arrive late as there is often a shortage of parking for the smaller jets.
Well, the good news is that this problem has been known for a while and the airport authority has been looking different solutions and finally decided on one solution for both the off gate aircraft parking and security screening between concourses.
The basics are shown in the graphic below. An entirely new concourse will be built for an additional 14 gates , each being able to accommodate an aircraft up an Embraer E175 sized aircraft. You’ll also notice two red areas on either side. These will be two new HUGE security screening areas. Once you leave the ticket counters, you’ll head to one of these where you can continue onto ANY concourse that you choose.
This free movement will allow arriving connecting passengers free movement between concourses as well, which so help out if you have a tight connection between flights. Should you have some time between flights, you’ll be able to walk through The Great Hall (pictured below), which was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s home: Monticello (You can find it on the back of every nickle), located in the historic city of Charlottesville, VA. The great hall has a panoramic view of the airport, Patomac River and of course our nation’s Capitol Building and Washington Monument.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is, right? Well, partly – as the airport authority has not set a specific timeline for construction on these changes or when it might be completed. They do however note that approval for the project has to be received by the FAA and they expect that sometime by June 2016, so don’t start packing just yet.
If you would like to read more, you can check out a full article on Flightglobal.
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