RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesA couple of years ago , squinting into the morning sun on a Dulles International Airport people mover after a red-eye from London, I found myself chatting with a flight attendant. Looking at the tired travelers packed in around her, she said in her British accent that she always dreaded flying through Washington. “I just can’t believe this is the airport at your nation’s capital .” I told her that she was not alone, and, further, that I usually refer to the hulking people mover as the “hell bus.” Everyone around us looked miserable. She laughed.
People in Washington really, really hate Dulles. It consistently ranks among America’s least liked airports. It has become a particular obsession for Donald Trump, who has called it a “terrible airport” and recently unveiled a $22.5 billion modernization plan that entails a number of improvements, including the elimination of the people movers. (It is not clear why Trump is so preoccupied with Dulles—he’s never, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, been a commercial passenger there—though it is fair to speculate that he stands a better-than-average chance of having the airport’s name changed to something more pleasing to him.)
Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t want to see much, if anything, changed at Dulles. The truth is, I love it. It’s a great airport, even a miraculous one. And while I’ll grant that the sardine-can quality of the people movers is undignified, a little part of me loves them too.
L et’s start with the obvious : The main terminal at Dulles is a thing of wonder, a sparkling monument to the human triumph of aviation. Consider the gorgeous swoop of its Eero Saarinen–designed roof, with a curve that calls to mind the moment of lift at takeoff when you can finally feel Bernoulli’s principle kick in.
Saarinen once described his creation as a “huge continuous hammock suspended between two concrete trees.” I love to walk through it in the very early morning, when the whole place has a sunbeams-through-the-windows-at-Grand-Central feel, long panels of light forming dramatic golden stripes all along the ceiling. I also love it in the late afternoon, when it’s overcrowded with people preparing to crisscross the globe. I love it when it’s somewhat empty and everything feels improbably easy and fast. I even love the seemingly endless windowless corridors—it’s always nice to stretch your legs before or after a long flight. To walk through Dulles is to conjure a feeling of unmatched possibility. You could be going anywhere—and people are.
I’m aware that you could say that about any major transportation hub—that the convergence of so many people going so many places is both awe-inspiring and the entire point of an airport in the first place. But a flight to and from Dulles is also far more likely to go smoothly than at other airports; 81 percent of both arrivals and departures are on time or early, according to the latest Department of Transportation data , making Dulles the second-most-punctual major airport in the nation. (Salt Lake City International is No. 1.)
Compare Dulles with Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the airport that most locals say they prefer (and many still insist on calling “National,” its 20th-century name). There, only 70 percent of departures leave on time, and a dismal 68 percent arrive on schedule. Roughly 1 percent of Dulles flights end up getting canceled, compared with nearly 4 percent at Reagan. Dulles also gives you more options—some 170 destinations all over the world compared with Reagan’s 100ish.
All of which is why I am unmoved when someone tries to tell me how much more convenient Reagan is. Yes, it is true that it’s a schlep to get to Dulles from downtown D.C.—Reagan is just a few miles from the U.S. Capitol, and easily accessible by bicycle or metro, while Dulles is roughly 30 miles away. But the time you’d save by going to Reagan won’t do you any good if your flight is delayed.
And anyway, must we really optimize every human experience for maximum efficiency? You’re already going to be hurtling through the air at 600 miles an hour, basking in the miracle of human flight. (See also: Louis C.K.’s riff on this subject.) So it takes you a little longer to get to the airport before participating in one of humankind’s most profound achievements—what’s your hurry? We are, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, “here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
I know what you might be thinking. Even the most Vonnegut-ish among us don’t always have the luxury of time to take the scenic route, even if we wish we did. A desire for convenience, especially among frequent travelers, is completely understandable. Yet the hatred of Dulles—so absolute in its consensus—reminds me of other ways in which our culture has hardened. Cynics like to tell one another that they don’t hate the things they hate enough, a notion so pervasive that it has become its own meme, often deployed to shut down a debate and swear loyalty to one’s political in-group. (Canonical examples include: You don’t hate the media enough ; You don’t hate Democrats enough ; You don’t hate centrists enough ; You don’t hate AI enough .) Perhaps it’s just my disposition as a Philadelphian to root for the underdog, but I see reflexive hatred of Dulles as operating the same way: more groupthinky and performative than fair.
O ur species is gloriously resilient and adaptable. These are useful qualities, evolutionarily, but also ones that encourage us to take the extraordinary and very quickly denigrate it as mundane. My favorite example of this phenomenon comes from an old cover of The New Yorker —specifically, the October 11, 1930, issue, which features an illustration by the modernist painter and sculptor Theodore Gilbert Haupt. The image depicted is one you’ve seen a million times: a dreamy view of Manhattan at night, as seen from a fixed-wing biplane, all twinkling city lights and skyscraper spires below. But what you may not rea...
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