Airport makeover means easier travel to US capital

Flying to, through, or from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on a regional jet is about to get easier. By 2021, passengers will say goodbye to being bussed out to their gate, and hello to easier security access, flight connections and more food and shopping concessions. What you won’t see are more flights to DCA. The US Department of Transportation puts a cap on that. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) just issued a firm notice to proceed with work on the next step of a massive remake of Reagan National’s ‘Project Journey’: a $US1 billion effort that officials hope will “transform the passenger experience,” especially for RJ passengers. Read: Dog days and peak passengers in record US summer The journey includes a pair of new security checkpoints that fully connect the concourse level of Terminal B/C to airline gate areas. Those checkpoints will add another eight lanes, increasing the total to 28. MWAA says the resulting RJ facility will replace the 14 outdoor “gates.” Those “gates” are now accessed via shuttle busses out of Gate 35X. MWAA President and CEO Jack Potter says the airport’s passenger areas were designed to handle 15 million flyers per year. “Today, more than 23 million passengers travel through the airport,” he says, adding that the big load strains infrastructure and crowds travelers. All of this, of course, doesn’t happen by magic. If you’re DCA- bound this summer and fall of 2018 expect heavy roadway traffic leading to and from the area. The airport suggests using Metro, the District of Columbia’s comprehensive commuter rail network. Metro has its own terminal at Reagan. Watch: Gorgeous rainbow contrail Diminutive DCA’s importance in North American aviation’s scheme of things is inversely proportionate to its size, sliced out of a spit of land as it is alongside the Potomac River. It’s not the number of passengers who use Reagan regularly. It’s who those passengers are: members of Congress (members have their own parking lot), lobbyists and officialdom of virtually every kind flock by the thousands, especially on Thursday evenings, to leave town. Ronald Reagan Washington National is often their airport of choice. Soon, the rest of us should find our experience at Reagan better too.